Fenix Phyre's Top 5 Games of 2017

So I want to start off this list by first giving the disclosure that not all of these games are games that I've played to completion, as when you tend to play 20-30 games a year finishing ALL of them is an incredible feat that typically doesn't happen.  That being said I have played enough of them to get the general idea behind the game and its effects to a satisfying level for myself to feel I can talk about it in a complete and positive light, even if I'm missing some aspects of the story.  Also while no game is ever disqualified from these prestigious awards I would like to emphasize that I do take things like microtransactions, HD remakes, and general reaction between community and publisher/developer in to account as well (albeit to a much smaller degree than the core game play mechanics). With that lets being with a small section of honorable mentions:

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
Developer: Spike Chunsoft
Publisher: Spike Chunsoft, NIS America
Platform: PS4, PS Vita, PC
U.S. Release Date: September 26, 2017

This series holds a well earned place in my heart, and while I'll fully admit to not giving V3 the time it deserves this year, the small time I had with it was magical nonetheless.  Spike Chunsoft has continuously found new ways to keep the game fresh and entertaining through out the entire experience, and V3 is no exception to this rule.  The cast is colorful, the scenery is impressive, and the story is downright bizarre as you try and discover the truth behind the events leading the cast into this new mind numbing killing game.

Nioh
Developer: Team Ninja
Publisher: Koei Techmo, Sony Interactive
Platform: PS4, PC
U.S. Release Date: Feburary 7, 2017

With the surging popularity of Dark Souls a large number of games have released to try and recreate the iconic formula with varrying degrees of success.  Nioh, decided to take the base core of Dark Souls and its stamina and resource management and grueling combat system and rather than mimic it, build on it in its own unique way.  While I personally have never been a Dark Souls player I am in love with Nioh.  The action is fast paced, faster I dare say than Bloodborne, the combat brutal, bosses challenging, and enemies unique.  Enough is built into the game to keep you coming back for more with increasing difficulty and challenging modes being unlocked after completing the game even veterans Souls fans will find the games end post game a difficult challenge suitable for any who want to truly test their steel.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Developer: Nintendo EPD
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Switch
U.S. Release Date: March 3, 2017

I would be remiss not to point out that the newest Zelda game has done wonders for the Switch as a system.  While the game is far from perfect, I do feel that a large amount of the success of the console can be attributed to this game.  It was a major game to pick as a launch title for the console and one that I feel really turned the tide around for Nintendo in an otherwise bleak looking future.  If not for Zelda and its massive fanbase the Switch would have probably only done half of its very impressive sales numbers this year.  And for that reason I'm giving Breath of the Wild a well deserved honorable mention.

Now that we have the honorable mentions out of the way let us get on to the main course, the reason everyone is here.  The top 5 game released in 2017.

5) South Park: The Fractured But Whole

Developer: Ubisoft San Francisco

Publisher: Ubisoft

Platform: PS4, XB1, PC

U.S. Release Date: October 17, 2017

To many, the South Park series is a childish cartoon that is full of bad jokes, bad language, and kids that any parent would be ashamed of.  To many others, the show is a rare insight into cultural events with a very careful and calculated approach about some of the absurdities of modern culture.  South Park: The Fractured But Whole does all of this and then some, but our topic this time is super hero movies.  The game references the show very heavily (specifically the latest 4-5 seasons) and continues the story the the New Kid, or Dumbass as they are lovingly called, and even presents some kind of eye opening commentary on other subjects, surprisingly including the option for them to be transgender (speaking of which you get some hilarious Mr Mackey scenes if your character is a transgender female of him calling to talk to your parents) which I felt was a HUGE step forward.

The combat system is different this time around swapping the turn based Final Fantasy action for a grid based Fire Emblem inspired experience.  You still have a turn based experience, however you are free to move your team around the board and use your abilities making your positioning a very large part of the game to avoid attacks, buff allies, maximize potential.  Also some nice QoL changes are that your life recovers outside of combat, and that you have no resource pool on abilities, just turn cool downs, and your super bar is shared between your team.  Without giving away too much of the game I can honestly say I highly recommend that everyone play South Park TFBW

4) Super Mario Odyssey

Developer: Nintendo EPD

Publisher: Nintendo

Platform: Switch

U.S. Release Date: October 27, 2017

To say that Nintendo isn't dedicated to their flagship titles would be akin to lying to people, and Super Mario Odyssey is the perfect example of this.  A bold new Mario on a bold new console the game breathes fresh life into a tried a true Mario formula that doesn't seem be any more worse for wear despite its age.  The game focuses around Mario and Peach and their every closing wedding day as Bowser crashes the party and take Peach as his own bride Mario must join forces with his new hat pal Cappy, board the ship known as the Odyssey and get back his betrothed. 

The game boasts a fresh outlook on classic Mario approach by seamlessly blending 3D exploration with 2D platformer (sometimes literally).  With Cappys abilities to allow Mario to take over the body of his enemies you are given new ways to solve puzzles and every thing you do seems to reward you.  Nintendo spent some serious time devoted to level design and thinking it through in this iteration, if you as a player feels that a certain simple task or action should give you a Power Moon then chances are it probably does.  No alley is left unexplored, everything in the game is placed there with meaning, and even the optional bosses and challenges are incredibly fun, even if they are difficult.  It's the perfect pick up and play Mario experience.  Now if only Nintendo could do some sort of achievement system....

3) Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus

Developer: Machine Games

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Platform: PS4, XB1, PC, Switch (2018)

U.S. Release Date: October 27, 2017

So uh, October was kind of a wild month with some really excellent games.  And chief among these was Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, which I'm going to refer to as Wolf 2 from here out.  Wolf 2 sees the return of series front runner and most pissed off Nazi-hunter, BJ Blazkowicz, and oh boy is he mad.  After spending 5 months in a coma, and discovering the Nazis are still on his ass about the whole "killing them" thing, BJ dons the super armor and takes the fight to the Nazis.....in America.  His objective this time is to get all of America as pissed of as he is, and he does a pretty good job of it.

Wolf 2 is just a brutal, if not more so, than its previous entries in the series.  The melee weapon this time around is a hatchet, which is (to no ones surprise) given a large number of over the top brutal Nazi enders in the form of regular and sneaky melee attacks.  Another major QoL change this time around is the classic ability to run and gun with two different weapons.  Want the stopping power of a shotgun but the range of an assault rifle?  Toss on both and let the lead fly as you take it to the Nazis while shoving your boot up their collective assholes.  My biggest complaint about the last game was the distinct lack of decent ranged options during the games stealth sections.  Well fear not, for this time around we are given a weapon upgrade option which includes a silencer for the pistol, making it so you're not exclusively dependent on the games special weapon (the lazerkraftwerk in the last game and dieselkraftwerk in this one).  

Finally I would be woefully remiss if I didn't at least mention that the mere existence of this game pissed off those on the far right and alt-right camps.  It seems the lesson of 70 years ago was never drilled into some of our heads of Nazis being bad so we need to retell it in all its gory detail.  If every other game on this list gets ignored don't skip this one, it is by far the most important game of the year, and not to mention one of the best.

2) Persona 5

Developer: Altus

Publisher: Altus, Atlus USA, Deep Silver

Platform: PS3, PS4

U.S. Release Date: April 4, 2017

Given my love of JRPGs this should come as little surprise to anyone.  The fifth main installment, and first main installment in nine years, in the Persona, Persona 5 takes players on what I can only describe as an LSD fueled journey though the wild, weird, and wacky as you command The Phantom Thieves while they work to steal the hearts of all who are devoid of justice in Tokyo.  The protagonist, whose name changes depending on media (Akira Kurusu in the manga or Ren Amamiya), lives a double life as a mild mannered high school student who must keep his nose down else he find a large amount of legal trouble, and a notorious phantom thief who sets out to other worldly palaces to right the wrongs that have been inflicted upon others in the world.  In standard Persona style others will join you along your adventure and it is up to you to make the most of their involvement.

Fans of the Persona franchise will be familiar with the games robust social link system and time-limiting daily life schedule.  As you race through dungeons to maximize your time in the real world to work on social links, social stats, and improve your character, so too must you pay attention to small details in game else you risk missing out on important opportunities like a rainy day bath, or a potential relationship with one of your social links.  The game focuses heavily on the development of your list of personas and your social links only provide to buff them even further, granting you a bonus when combining a persona of the related arcana in addition to combat bonuses to developing relationships with your allies.  For any long standing JRPG aficionado Persona 5 is a must play as you will get roughly 90 hours out of one playthough, and trust me, you'll want to do more.  

None of that though even begins to approach the games amazing soundtrack, stunning visuals, and absolutely charming cast of characters, each a diverse and unique as the designs of their persona.  Altus took their time on this one and the love and hand crafting that went into it speaks every minute that you play it.  Numerous people on online message boards have actually given it large amounts of praise because of how accurate they were in depicting certain areas of Tokyo saying that they took their time and studied the city to bring it to life in game.  With all the love and attention Person 5 received from Atlus lets just say that this is a game I will be talking about for years to come.

1) Horizon Zero Dawn

Developer: Guerrilla Games

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Platform: PS4

U.S. Release Date: Febuary 28, 2017

My game of the year award goes to a game that I have been keeping my eyes on ever since it was first announced at E3 2015.  Its a game that I feel reminds us why we play games, that tells a beautiful story with a positive message that doesn't get too preachy.  It's a game that allows and encourages us to look at games as more than just an interactive experience and push forward ideas of what we can do with this medium.  Of course I'm talking about Horizon Zero Dawn.  In an age where the majority of AAA titles are focusing on how their games can get the most from their consumer Horizon Zero Dawn focuses on how it can give the consumer the most.  With a truly impressive 40 hour storyline and a new game plus mode available for completionists HZD.

HZD focuses on the story of Aloy, a young woman who was cast out at birth of her Nora because no mother would claim her.  As she grows with the help of a fellow outcast named Rost she aspires to be welcomed in the Nora so she can have a community she has never known.  When it comes time to complete the trials into adulthood and be accepted back into the tribe the Nora are attacked and it is up to Aloy to track down the attackers and discover why.  Over the course of her journey she discovers that she has a greater destiny and role to play in all of this and must overcome treacherous obstacles, discover the truth of what happened to the ancient ones and their cities, and find out why machines now rule the planet.

Of course those of us that have played the game though know that HZD is not only a game with a truly unique storyline, but it is also one of possibilities.  A feature of the game that I've long held in high regard is how fun the combat is, and how engaging the game can be in its diversity of approaches.  You can approach almost any fight in any number of ways, and different weapons add to the fun.  Every person is different and will use different approaches.  A good example of this is I'm a fan of traps, trip wires, and rope casters, while my roommate enjoyed slings a good bit.  We each had a different approach to the same obstacles and found our own niche in doing so. 

The most important part of HZD though, is that it's just plain fun.  No strings attached.  The game is beautiful, the music is moving, the art is something out of this world.  Anyone who skipped this one would be remiss to not pick it up at some point to enjoy it.  And thats why I'm naming Horizon Zero Dawn as my 2017 game of the year.

As with every year however there are some titles I unfortunately don't get a chance to play, I may have them sitting on my shelf, or maybe I never got around to buying them, but regardless these are games that I consider my misses of the year.  Games that looked genuinely good and worthwhile, but unfortunately never got into my schedule.  For 2017 the misses were:

•  Nier Automata
• .hack//G.U. Last Recode
• Resident Evil 7 Biohazard
• Tales of Berseria
• Life is Strange: Before the Storm
• What Remains of Edith Finch
• Puyo Puyo Tetris
• Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (though this is kind of in a special category as to why)
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2

I know it may seem like a long list, but when you consider I played 30-40 games this year, work a full time job, AND cosplay and go to conventions the fact the list is so small is rather impressive if I may say so myself.

That's it for 2017.  Here's to hoping that 2018 is another great year in gaming.  Have fun everyone!

Wolfenstein: The New Order Review

Wolfenstein The New Order
Developer: Machine Games
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC via Steam, Playstation3, Xbox 360
U.S. Release Date: May 20, 2014

Unfortunately the world we live in right now has become rife with a resurgence of KKK, Neo-Nazis, and Patriot Extremist groups that are utilizing similar tactics that the Third Reich did back in the 1930's.  And while I'm sure all of us can agree that these people are universally bad/hated/unwanted we also probably don't know how to handle them because of some of the overwhelming "are you serious" attitudes on social media nowadays.  Well I find it rather ironic that I started to replay though the new Wolfenstein game this summer only for something like Charlottesville to happen only a couple weeks after I was taking my slow progression through it.

But, I don't really want to dive down into the rabbit hole that is above (plus I'll be talking about the reaction on social media to the ad campaign of New Colossus in a future rantology), so I really want to start getting into the meat and potatoes here.  Wolfenstein The New Order is a brutal re imagining of the classic Wolfenstein series in a few bold new ways.  Everything you love about the old games is back, but with the added love and affection of glorious 2014 updated graphics, special kill sequences for melee attacks, and of course Nazis in space.  While the looks and action in this may be a far cry from older Wolfenstein games, the Nazi killing message certainly isn't.  The Nazis are back, and this time BJ Blazkowicz is even more pissed of than before.  Oh, and before we get too far into this thing I want to go ahead and toss in this just for good measure.

******************************SPOILER WARNING *********************************

So, the game starts off in 1946, taking place 3 years after the events of 2009's release.  The Nazi war machine has been developing new technologies with the help of General Deathshead, and they have managed to start to push back against allied forces.  So in steps BJ fucking Blazkowicz, the most badass soldier to ever rip a Nazis face off, and you guessed it, he's still fucking pissed.  During the attack on Deathsheads castle base BJ is mortally wounded when he narrowly escapes an encounter with Deathshead with only one of his fellow soldiers in tow (either Fergus Reid or Private Probst Wyatt III).  His allies are unable to find his body and he ends up in a Nazi run mental institution under the care of Anya Oliwa and her parents.  After nearly 20 years in a vegetative state Blazkowicz is able to get up and start kicking some Nazi teeth in when they come to shut things down.

After capturing an officer and escaping with Anya to her grandparents house they interrogate the officer and BJ discovers his worst fear: the rest of the world has given up and is now under Nazi control.  Angered he hatches a plan to liberate defectors and start his ass kicking campaign all over again.  After releasing the ally you saved Blazkowicz learns of a resistance underneath central Nazi command in Berlin run by Caroline Becker who hatches a plan to steal some stealth choppers and Nazi intel to put them in their place.  During the process Blazkowicz discovers a secret organization known as Da'at Yichud and a scientist known as Set Roth who is being held in a labor camp.  Blazkowicz infiltrates the camp, kills some fucking Naizs, and ruins some ancient Nazi bitches face by crushing it with a giant robot that Roth was forced to create.

After his liberation Roth agrees to give some of Da'at Yichud tech to the resistance to even the tides of war, but they need a U-Boat to operate it, and as it just so happens the U-Boat that Blazkowicz jacks is the flag ship of the entire Nazi U-Boat fleet. Why you ask? BECAUSE HE'S A FUCKING BADASS THAT'S WHY.  Anyrate, this motherfucker isn't just a nuclear sub, no, nothing of the sort.  It's a nuclear sub with a fucking nuclear artillery gun on it, but the problem is they need the codes to launch it, which are on the moon.  So they hit the supply cache and grab a weapon known as the Spindly Torque, or what I call The-Badass-Ball-of-Death-and-Destruction because it is literally that, and set off to get some codes.  On the moon Blazkowicz airlocks some fucking Nazis and shoves a dick down their collective throats, but when he gets back he discovers that Deathshead tries to do some fucking of his own by attacking the resistance base, however this predictably back fires when he kidnaps Anya serving to only piss off Blazkowicz even further.

The end game sequence starts with one pissed off commando, in a gun loaded with one Baddass-Ball-of-Death-and-Destruction, aimed at Deathshead's castle. Over the course of his rampage he lays waste to dozens upon dozens of Nazi.  After reaching Deathshead you're forced to fight one of his newest creations: a robot with your allies brain in it, who you eventually kill at their request.  Finally Deathshead comes to die, in a giant robot, it's a good fight.  Really that's the story, this is one of the better story based FPS games I've played recently and I can say I'm excite for the second one.

*********************************END SPOILERS**********************************

While the game doesn't offer multiplayer (a fact that I personally find very refreshing and enjoyable), it doesn't suffer from a lack of replay ability and content.  From different difficulty modes, to collectibles, to even the original Wolfenstein being in game there is plenty to keep even a seasoned player occupied through the game.  Plus Nazi killing, who doesn't love that?

While I may not have much more to offer than a plot summary and to describe how much I love this game I will say that overall it is simplistic, with lots to do and keep you occupied, also multiple playthroughs will be required along with getting used to dying in some circumstances because you need to learn and adjust to your surroundings, especially on the higher difficulties.  I highly enjoyed it and look forward to the release of New Colossus.  I give Wolfenstein: The New Order 8 severed Nazi scalps, out of 10.

Ghost Recon Wildlands Review

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC via Steam
U.S. Release Date: March 7, 2017

Oh what a brave new world this is.  Once upon a Tom Clancy game was nothing more than a name slapped on an overly ambitious video game to garnish a higher number of sales by associating with a famous author.  Now that isn't to say that the games are inherently bad, but let's just say that history hasn't been overly kind to them either.  The series is as marred with shovelware CoD simulators as much as any other as large as it has been with some series getting a new title with as little as a year between them, but that doesn't preclude them from having a few good fully formed turds every once in a while.

While Wildlands may be a polished turd we still need to remind ourselves that at its core is is just that: a turd.  The controls are anything but smooth and honestly it took some serious patching to solidify how helicopters fly (honestly now after 6 months post release do they FINALLY feel flyable without much trouble). But that's not really how I want to focus this review.  Yes, the game has issues, be aware that it controls like a drunk brick, that the menu is unintuitive, that the map is more clustered than someone's gonorrhea splattered genitals, and that honestly the way leveling works really makes me want to throw someone off a cliff.  Be aware of all that, because it is important.

I feel like bothering spoiler tags for this game and this review would be doing it a disservice because the story is so fragmented and all over the place (literally the map is a bunch of different provinces, each with their own story that wraps back into the big one in small little ways) that I'd never be able to fully describe it, so I'll give you the ass wiping version of it and call it good.  More or less the game takes place in Bolivia where a Mexican drug cartel called Santa Blanca and their leader El Sueno (Spanish for The Sueno) has come in to take over the local coca fields and make some sick ass fucking cocaine man.  Now obviously this is a bad thing and the CIA sent in an agent to get the skinny on them before sending in the ghosts to take them out.  Well shit went sideways, he got killed, and an embassy was blown up, so no its time to take this cartel down for good.  You're team (Nomad) is an elite group of special agents called ghosts.  You have to go through and destabilize the cartel operations in order to get to El Sueno.  There also a rebel faction who are freedom fighters for Bolivia too so they throw in their best for you too.

Throughout the game you have to complete a series of provinces to destabilize the cartel and their operations with influence, smuggling, production, and security.  The base game offers 21 of these provinces, and each province is held by a boss or buchon.  In each province you must perform different tasks to lure the buchon out of hiding and either kill or capture them.  These tasks can be airing out their dirty laundry (not literally), destroying coca fields, blowing up stockpiles, or my personal favorite, killing bad guys.  No really, despite the shitty controls the gun play in the game is incredibly fun because you can mark targets for the AI to automatically kill, and you can mark up to 3 at a time.  It's kind of insane.

As I mentioned the gun play is excellent especially with how they give you a different set of options to mix it up with when you're playing with different approaches.  For example I constantly found myself in the eternal debate on whether to parachute into a base, ram through the gates with a truck loaded with C4, take out the guards and stealth in, or guns blazing in a Humvee with a minigun on it.  The awesome thing is that for the most part, the choice is yours everytime.  There's a handful of situations that require the use of stealth, but outside of that go wild, do what you gotta do, and by all means make the cartel suffer.

I doubt it would surprise anyone that turds are offensive to people, and this one is no different.  The entire country of Bolivia was so pissed off that Ubisoft left this nice plopper on their lawn that they actually filed a suite against Ubisoft Paris for "misrepresenting their country", and while I can totally agree with their claim, it is a bit silly.  But, in Ubisofts defense they did use Bolivia as a backdrop for their claim of "[Bolivia's] beautiful vistas, wholesome culture, and lively people" which actually does shine through in the game, and has turned Bolivia into somewhere I have actually added to my top places to visit since this game came out (though I'll fully admit to a desire to do more research before I go).  So whatever the hell Ubisoft did, it worked on me.

The largest overall complaint I have is how unintuitive and hard to use the map and mission selector are.  Some games have really well made UI's but this on is just kinda like here's this really detailed map, and then here's literally all this shit you can do, sort it out, oh and zooming out doesn't help because you never get a summary of activities for a region, just who the boss is and your progress on getting them, and beyond that is a cartel overview. Additionally there are no indicators of what collectibles are underground or above ground so you can spend quite a bit a time searching for one specific item if you don't already know where it's at (I actually spent around 30 minutes trying to get an item that ended up being underground which I never really got because I couldn't find a way down).  Really even if it's just on the mini map this is the kinda shit that needs to be marked or indicated in some way, shape, or form as it caused me a large headache.

Finally the last little bit I want to touch on is DJ Perico, the in game radio host who works as a propaganda agent for the cartel.  He quite enigmatic, fun, funny, and one of the most real characters in a game I've ever met in a while.  He only plays a small role as a buchon in the story, but due to his status as a radio personality he's all over the place in this game.  Really he adds a lot to live up to here, and makes the driving portions a lot more bearable as you get some genuinely funny dialog along the way.

While Wildlands is a turd, it's a fun turd, the kind you play and enjoy your time with despite all the glaring flaws that the game has.  I actually once referred to this game as my guilty pleasure, because to some the idea of fun (which I've talked about before) is so foreign and almost damning that the true purpose of games is all but lost on them.  Though all of that I'd like everyone to remember that.  MY final verdict comes down to seven wet squirts out of ten, I do want to add a turdsterisk to it and say that it's a fun experience even if you don't play it through to completion.

Destiny 2 Review

Destiny 2
Developer: Bungie
Publisher: Activision
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC via Battle.Net
U.S. Release Date: September 6, 2017 (PS4, XB1), October 24, 2017 (PC)

By now I have been an overly content owner of a Playstation 4 for a little over 3 years.  My first PS4 was the white Destiny Limited Edition console back in 2014, and this was something I of course lined up at midnight to get, ripped open, and stayed up all night playing.  I was hooked.  I beat the game that day, ran strikes till I was blue in the face, and just kept on going and going until I passed out around 1 am on the 11th.  Destiny has been a game that I have kept near and dear to my heart, not only because it was my first game on the platform, or my first Platinum trophy, but because the world that Bungie had so carefully crafted (even if it was locked behind the grimoire not in game) was something that I fell in love with and wanted every part of.  I was in love, and still am.  So naturally I bucked up, dropped the insane $250 for the Collector's Edition, and lets just say that it is possible to fall in love twice.

So, this entire thing is going to be riddled with spoilers.  Like a ridiculous amount of spoilers, especially considering I'm not even going to bother to post this until after I finish the raid (a little over a week post release).  Does that mean you should stop reading?  I'm not going to tell you not to, but there is a lot of spoilers, and later I'm going to throw on my spinfoil hat and talk about a few theories I have.  Sooooooooo, here we go:

******************************SPOILER WARNING *********************************

For anyone who played the open beta over summer, you'd know very well the setup to the game: Ghaul, a renegade Cabal badass, is here to take the light for himself.  Now, we've dealt with some pretty serious threats before such as Atheon, Time's Confulx, in the Vault of Glass, Crota and Oryx, literal gods of the Hive, Skolas, the Kell of Wolves who sought to reunite the Fallen houses, and even SIVA, the nanotechnology that was the undoing of the legendary Lords of Iron who were the first to bring order to humanity after The Collapse.  But none of those before hand have even come close to accomplishing what Ghaul did.

The opening scene shows Cayde-6 entering into the Vanguards outpost in the Tower, supposedly returning from slacking off somewhere, only to be greeted by Ikora and Zavala indicating that the perimeter seems to have been breached and the sensors are not responding.  And then the Cabal invaded.  Ghaul and his Red Legion seemingly sweep over the city like a plague that we guardians can barely stop as a massive six armed ship approaches the Traveler with his fleet laying waste to the City.  In the meantime, Ghost and our guardian are on our way back from a patrol mission when we are unable to raise the Tower to report in. We arrive to a partially destroyed Tower, where the Vanguard, Shaxx, and Holiday are mounting rescue operations for the citizens who are still alive.  We meet up with Cayde and Shaxx who help us press onwards toward Zavala, who is guarding against the onslaught, and Ikora, who is desperately searching for the Speaker.  When Ikora discovers her failure, she shows us why she is the Warlock Vanguard and proceeds to wreak havoc across the battlefield while you head to meet Holiday for a ride to Ghauls ship to cut off the head of their assault.

Arriving on the ship, in spectacular style I might add, you are tasked with disabling the shields to allow for a bombardment, however things do not go as planned as the Cabal are able to overcome the City's defenses and you are one of the only ones left in the fray.  Intercepted by Ghaul, he reveals his plan of entombing the Traveler to steals its light and cut it off from the Guardians, while spartan kicking you off his ship a la 300 style.  Naturally things don't go his way as you survive.  Desperate to make it to safety you recover Ghost, escape the city and are followed by a Hawk you glimpsed in a vision during your fall (predicting many things, including the enemy of the Traveler) that leads you to safety.  During your journey you come across a human by the name of Hawwthorne, a non-Guardian who lives outside of the city and was relatively unaffected by the attack, she is setting up a gathering point in Europe by the broken shard of the Traveler, her goal not to retake the City, but to build a safe haven that is defensible in case the Cabal come looking.  Helping her to set up her network and draw in other survivors you learn that Zavala is rallying the surviving Guardians on Titan to mount a counterattack, and while Hawthorne is hesitant, she agrees that this is your decision and you must do what you believe in.

Once landing upon Titan you discover the Hive have found their way there as well, and are attempting to summon Oryx's sister Savathun, as well to the system.  So naturally you get to work to foil their plans, and set up the moon for staging operations once again.  Though even with the power online, and some secret Cabal messages decrypted you're not out of the woodwork yet as the Cabal have a super weapon pointed at the sun ready to blow the galaxy apart should their plan fail.  Zavala calls on you to go to Nesus and rescue Cayde and find Ikora.  Arriving on Nesus you find Cayde stuck in a Vex teleportation loop, with a crashed colony ship AI, Failsafe, watching with pleasure as he struggles.He tells you to retrieve the teleporter he was working on, as he feels it will be necessary to get to Ghaul, despite the super weapon.  After some convincing he tells you Ikora is on Io, the last place the Traveler touched, where she frequently meditates.  On Io you discover a way to destabalize the super weapon with the help of a broken down Warmind (given the designation Jys, a possible reference to Charlemanges sword Joyeuse).

With the Vanguard at your back you return to Earth to formulate a plan of attack.  You need to slip up to the weapon, disable it, and escape before the Vanguard launch their assault to take out Ghaul in the city.  Hawthore tells them of a way inside and battle plans are drawn up which include you stealing a high ranking Cabal officers personal vessel, but like everything else that involves Cayde, the plan goes awry and it is up to you to square off against Ghaul in the end.  He is able to seize the power of the light and a fierce battle ensues, ending in Ghaul becoming a massive creature made of light and calling himself a new god.  But just in the nick of time the Traveler wakes up and shows Ghaul whose boss.

*********************************END SPOILERS**********************************

(mostly)

Whew, that was a fun summary, and believe me I skimmed over a good chunk of it hitting mostly the highlights.  Anyrate one of the biggest stand out features to me for Destiny 2 is the gun play, the first game brought us around two three different weapon slots with different types going in different places for maximum effectiveness in combat.  You had a Primary, Secondary, and Heavy, which while it worked out nicely in PvE, it really overplayed it's hand in PvP, however this new system which replaces Special and Heavy with Energy and Power respectfully fixes a lot of those problems.  The way this works is all Auto Rifles, Scout Rifles, Hand Cannons, Sidearms, Pulse Rifles, and the new Submachine Gun can be either Primary or Energy, with Primary dealing non-elemental damage, and Energy being around for those shielded foes.  This means that you no longer need to deal with people in PvP running around with godly amounts of Sniper Rifle ammo (formerly a Special, now it has been moved to Power weapon), but it makes your PvE games require a bit more foresight.  Beyond just what and how you can carry, each gun feels unique and different from each other, and acquiring the same gun twice isn't going to result in a different gun based on its perks, every gun with the same name has the same perks, so much less farming is required to get quality weapons.  Fighting and shooting is fun, engaging, and you can really tell Bungie nailed their "30 seconds of fun" mantra with this one.

Along with the weapons I would be remiss if I didn't discuss the games armor as well, as each set plays to the class descriptions very well.  Titans, the games beat stick, look much larger and bulkier than in the previous entry, where they didn't feel as large and at times would even come off as being quite slim.  Warlocks almost all wear longer robes now, more reminiscent of a scholar or researcher, while their bonds are very detailed and helmets sleek and streamline.  The Hunters as well have been slimmed down overall to appear more mobile, threatening, and stealthy with their cloaks.  The one complaint that, like many others, have is that the shader system is kind of a crap shoot.  You see shaders are set individually now, and can also be applied to weapons and ships as well as armor, and while that isn't a bad thing, a lot of the better looking shaders are locked behind the games Bright Engrams, which is a form of microtransaction.  Since you can earn these in game, I'm not all that upset, as you earn them rather quickly, but I am a little disappointed that there isn't an alternative way to get them whether that be spending Glimmer (the games currency), or being rewarded through other means it makes the game feel a bit more grindy than I personally feel that it should be.  Either way this issue should be addressed as it would only serve to discourage casual players down the road.

One of my favorite things that Bungie did was redesign the rank up system to better encourage players to play the game, farm activities, and increase the number of rewards that you recieve.  The way it used to work was you needed a sum of 1500 (at the first level) to 2500 (pretty much after level 5) reputation in order to level up, well unfortunately reputation, while it wasn't capped, was slow to earn as you earned between 10-100 per patrol, and around 125 on a Strike mission and Crucible victory (half for a loss), that's not even to mention sub factions which earned at half the rate of Vanguard and Crucible, so while you got it for all activities, it was a MUCH slower gain than your primary sources, and for players like me who almost never did crucible it was laughable.  The new system uses tokens, which can be gained and turned in on any character, so you are no longer locked into receiving rewards by playing that character.  So if you want to gear an alt, grind on a main and redeem on that alt, if you want to kit out your main in raid gear first, turn in all you raid tokens on them and get them all the sweet sweet raid loot.  Overall the system is much more rewarding as you can earn multiple rewards and ranks in a shorter amount of time than you could previously, which will only serve to keep casual players coming back for more and more Destiny.

Bungie, finally offers in game clan support for Destiny 2, and will actually actively reward players for being in a clan.  See now you have a clan banner which levels up over a season (unknown how long this will last) which allows clan members to enjoy increased rewards for playing the game and completing events such as completing public events, decrypting engrams, defeating Cabal, etc.  Plus with an in game interface it makes clans and clan management all the easier for the end user as you don't need to go online, or open the app, or any weird thing like that.

Crucible has also changed, in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse.  All game modes have been converted to 4v4 away from either 3v3 or 6v6, and for competetive and trials the change is welcome and actually an improvement, in quickplay and casual the change really drags on your sanity.  See the biggest changes which affect that are the fact that there in an increase in the time to kill (TTK) for players, which translates to a larger importance being place on team play and team shooting, which while a positive aspect, doesn't help quickplay as it has historically been a place for players to relax and not really care about team play, or moving together, just getting out and doing some PvP.  In casual play you often encounter 3 or 4 stacks who will work together because their preferred game mode is there and they dominate over the other team.

The final two major gameplay changes come in the form of the Nightfall and Raid.  The Nightfall is no longer reset on wipe, but instead you get a respawn ticker of around 25 seconds, and the entire strike is timer based, starting at 11 minutes and working its way to 0, at 0 you are reset to orbit and you must start over.  Some weeks you have a variant option to increase the amount of time you have by performing a certain task, whether that is killing enemies, jumping through vex hoops (literally), killing oracles, or other means.  This makes the strike more forgiving for less experiences players, but still offers the challenge for more experienced ones.  The Raid on the other hand, is Cabal themed like the rest of the base game, but instead of fighting The Red Legion, you are set against Emperor Calus and his Loyalists who seeks to test you to see if you are worth joining him.  One of the biggest things is the fact that the Raid has 4 different wings which must be unlocked through a series of collecting and defending standards from and endless wave of Cabal forces, after you are able to collect and defend all 3 your way to the next challenge is open.  The challenges are genuinely fun and well thought out, even if not obvious at first.  Our team went in blind and only had one or two issues because of some non-obvious mechanics we encountered, overall though we ran into little difficulty and mostly just needed to refocus after getting stressed.  The raid also offeres a second set of loot in the form of underbelly keys, which reward engrams, tokens, and a chance at exotics, each of these chests however either must be found, or is locked behind a door that is protected by "watchers" who must be silently eliminated.  The final large change here is the addition of the guided games feature which allows players to search for a group for Nightfall and Raid activities (even though raid isn't quite out yet), then these allow clans who sign up to PUG (pick up group) players to be rated, and a higher rating means an easier time of getting people in the future.

The final thing that I would be remiss to not mention is the soundtrack.  Honestly when I think of Bungie I always thing of how wonderful their music and composition is.  Really they're one of the stand out companies for it (standing among CD Projekt RED and Bioware), and in Destiny 2 it shows.  The ambiance set is perfect, the highs are accentuated excellently, the lows are disheartening, and everything in between is executed to a T.  I have yet to look it up, but if there is a soundtrack, and I can get my hands on it I'm going to because I can honestly see myself at the gym working out with this music on in the background, it's THAT FUCKING GOOD.

Overall, while the game does have a few flaws, they are largely out spoken by the sheer amount of content to do, the improved drops and loot system, and the expanded and ease of access of lore in game.  Destiny 2 has some large quality of life improvements, genuine and unforced humor, and a fresh new take on the Destiny name.  I'm excited to see where Destiny 2 goes down the road with it's DLC, and I hope you are too.  Destiny 2 gets 9 completely incorrect names for Ghaul, out of 10.

Rantology: The new Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus Trailer has 0 chill and it's beautiful

So yesterday Bethesda released a new new gameplay trailer for Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, and it is absolutely beautiful.  It's full of Nazi killing, Fascist fighting, and Liberation fueled ass kicking.  Seriously it's almost as if Bethesda you know, paid attention to all of the press after their E3 reveal and were just like "Fuck it, might as well".  Anyrate, check out the new trailer bellow:

Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus releases October 27th, 2017 on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam.  Be sure to keep your eyes out as I'll be reviewing the game here shortly after launch.

Rantology: Framerates

It is with more and more frequency that we see the gap between PC and console becoming closer and closer, whether that be in commonly shared games, hardware, or even capabilities (like streaming off on consoles).  Naturally that conversation always rears it's ugly head back to performance (instead of more valuable conversations like the costs of digital delivery, Steam vs PS/MS storefronts, and a discussion on cross platform play), and one of those primary components is framerates and how they affect gameplay and can make the game seem like it an overall better experience.  As a software engineer this is something I know a thing or two about, so I figured what a better way than to turn a heated debate into a passionate conversation.

So, the first thing that I feel needs to be addressed when having conversations like these is the idea that a higher frame rate means a more polished game, and while on the surface this can seem true, however when you get down to it that's not the case.  So what exactly does frame rates mean?  Well to put it simply it's the number of times a screen will refresh in a certain period, most commonly we look at it in terms of frames per second, or fps, another term for this is a Hertz, Hz, so something that has a rate of 1 fps (1 Hz) is redrawing it's screen once every second, now this doesn't necessarily mean that it is changing what is on the screen, just that is how fast the screen does a refresh.  This is a restriction by the hardware, but most modern TV's will have a minimum of 60 Hz, with a large portion going up to 120 Hz or 240 Hz.

So if thats what a Hz is, how does this affect framerates and our gameplay?  Well simply put when a game runs at 30 fps it is capable of rerendering that display once every 1/30 of a second.  This doesn't necessarily mean that the screen will change though, and even in some PC games that rate will fluctuate while you play based on background processes, which actually is an issue because it leads to tearing and creates an effect of removing immersion in the game and due to rapid change in framerate.  Ever play League of Legends and experience a perceived lag spike?  That's exactly what I'm talking about. On the opposite side of it the higher the framerate the smoother the animations look, the better the experience you're likely to have.

All of this sounds really simple so far, and it's pretty easy to see that framerates are one of the most noticeable aspects of your game, well what if you have an effectively unlimited framerate, but other parts of your game are causing you to experience slowdowns and issues?  Say, for example, you're playing a very intensive RTS and you're in command of massive WWII sized armies on a battlefield. Well this kind of game will undoubtedly be very processor intensive, but the graphics engine you're using allows you to run at 60 fps consistently.  This is a pretty good thing, but because you need to do so many calculations on this game at one point in time because this game is hyper accurate and bases shots and damage on the individual and not on the squad/unit every time a bullet collision happens it needs to check to see if the wound caused was fatal or not.  This is going to cause a large slowdown because now you're running very processor intensive operations every game cycle, and these calculations may not by the time you need to redraw, well even in an optimal setting of only being able to redraw every other cycle now you've cut your framerate in half and are effectively running at 45 fps at 90 Hz refresh.

So while you may be able to handle that sweet 90 fps, you're now effectively playing at 45 fps, which is a noticeable drop in how smooth your game runs.  This is actually a pretty generous example of a scenario like this as some more intensive games like Sins of a Solar Empire can slow down to around 15 fps during max processing.  How can we combat this and still achieve a maximum amount of smoothness?  Well the easiest way is to drop your refresh rate to run at a lower Hz, this will give you a higher effective framerate, while optimizing how smooth you can operate.  Lets use the above example.  Say our calculations actually take 1/50 of a second to run and prepare the screen, well if we drop our refresh rate to 50 Hz we can actually increase or frame rate to 50 fps, up from our formerly noticed metric of 45 fps.  So in this case while I can advertise my game at running at 90 fps, in practice, running at 50 fps will give the player a better experience.

Some of your better developers will actually account for this and adjust the framerate and optimize it based on calculations, League of Legends attempts this as do most other MMO's, but a lot of those are based on network traffic, which is a conversation for another time, though that does play into your framerate when you need to redraw the screen.  Ideally though, in ur perfect environment, we're working offline, as these are the games that tend to get the most flak for setting a "low ball" of 30 fps. While many arguments on both sides can be made about capping framerates on consoles and pc, and just about everything around the subject, the base of it is all the same, the fact that when you're dealing with a difference in systems and computing power it will all affect your framerate output to your user.

So how can we change this and better use our resources to optimize our framerates?  Well the easiest way is to better handle data.  More structured, and ideally organized data is faster and easier to process.  The idea is if we use a data structure that offers near constant access time to data the player cares about then the better we are using our resources.  Another way is to do what I call prioritized processing, or process data that the player will see first, and do "invisible" calculations afterwards.  I know that's confusing so let me explain.

The idea is if we know our player has a viewbox that is 60 degrees of a circle and can only see that we start with things happening in that view, and then the further something is from our view, the lower a priority it has to process thus allowing data to be updated in relative to how important it is for our view.  Let's use our example above.  Say we break our 90 Hz to 90 time units, in 1 unit I can process roughly 55% of our data, by the above optimization we run at 50 fps, of that 55%, 30% is our immediate view screen, and the other 25% is external data, well say we really want to squeeze out that extra 10 fps, so we need see how we can optimize our resources to achieve that.  Well we use this idea of easing out, or setting an ideal range away from the camera for data we deem important.  Let's say our ideal is half the screen at current view. Everything after that has the same priority of "doesn't need to happen now, but we shouldn't put it off forever".  So the idea is that every time unit, remember we reduced down to 60 fps, or 60 Hz we start off by checking our bounds, everything in that has a priority of 1, then every object moving outwards gets its priority modified as we move out, until we reach that easing line, and calculate its priority.  That is how we determine our movement calculations, seeing who takes damage, seeing what needs to animate, seeing what needs to disappear because it's been destroyed.  This way if, in that one time unit, we only get 80% of the way through our calculations before we need to clean and prepare for the next cycle, we slightly increase it's priority, and prepare for the next cycle.  This will allow us to hit that sweet sweet 60 fps by optimizing our available resources.

While framerates may not be the most important aspect of development, but they can look like it, and purely devoting resources to framerates isn't the only or ideal solution to improve this metric. They matter, but not as much as other things.  I hope this has been educational and you can go out and win some arguments you've been having with your friends.  Till next time.

Rantology: I'm actually okay with the micro transactions in Destiny 2

So  we saw the release of Destiny 2, and while my review will be coming after I clear the raid next week, I can tell you that I have enjoyed what I have played so far. Despite how refreshing the game is though, people have already taken to dismissing the game because of micro transactions that are hamfistedly shoved into it via Eve Levante and her Eververse. Now in the original Destiny these offered exclusive rewards (mainly cosmetic save for sparrows that could be used in SRL) and it was understandably upsetting due to it's paygating of content.

Destiny 2 however seems to have learned from past mistakes as the prestige system now awards guardians with these premium rewards for obtaining higher levels so even the cosmetic aspects to them can be acquired without spending a dime. This includes the controversial new shaders (which are consumed upon changing even though they are applied per item now), and exotic ships and sparrows. I'm....okay with this. I've never had an issue of a system like this that offers cosmetic options to come outside of a paid manner, it adds a level of "one more" to it to keep players playing, and not stay stagnant. I know some will argue against this, but honestly I don't have an issue, its an overall positive addition to a game that will only encourage me to play even more.

Toukiden 2 Review

Toukiden 2
Developer: Omega Force, Koei Techmo Games
Publisher: Koei Techmo
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), Playstation VITA, PC via Steam
U.S. Release Date: March 21, 2017

So, way back in the beginning of the year I had every intention to do a review of Toukiden Kiwami in some sort of desperate hope to get people excited and pick up Toukiden 2, however my mistake was trying to review a game that was a minimum of a 60 hour commitment, and while that 60 hour commitment was a very worthwhile commitment, it was still a 60 hour commitment.  And while I feel that you should play Toukiden Kiwami, especially if you enjoy the Monster Hunter games, I sadly won't be reviewing that.  Toukien 2 on the other hand, is something I am going to discuss.

The thing I feel that I must clarify, especially when discussing games made by Omega Force, is that I love Dynasty Warriors.  Yes, they're repetitive, yes they campy, but so?  They're fun and they're a good way to unwind and drone after a long day or on a weekend where you feel lazy.  Granted Toukiden 2 isn't much different, however it does take the giant monster killing formula made popular by the Monster Hunter games and adds Omega Forces fast paced combat on top of it, which I feel only adds to the genre in a positive way. While Capcoms slower more methodical approach does have its place, and is very well done in Monster Hunter, Toukiden 2's fast paced platformer-esque craziness is more than welcome because not only is the player quick to respond, but the monsters (or Oni in Toukiden's case) are too.

The game takes place in what I'm guessing to be 19th century Japan, the reason I say this is because an exact date is never given, and due to some story elements makes it difficult to determine exactly, where Oni hunt and attack humans, previously an organization known as "Slayers" hunted them silently from the shadows and protected humanity in secret, however now the Oni have revealed themselves and the Slayers are now out of hiding to protect humanity from their reign of chaos.  You start the game as an elite Slayer who is present and defending an human city during the time known as "The Awakening" when a massive surge of Oni appear to launch an all out attack on humanity.  During the invasion you are sent 10 years forward in time and appear in a small place known as Mahoroba Village where this story takes place.  You must unravel the mysteries around what happened and why you were transported forward in time.  That's all your getting because more would be pretty major spoilers.  Though if you're worried about not having played the first one, while I do highly recommend it, it's not necessary for the story of the game.

For those who are not familiar with these genres of games the idea is that you, the much smaller and more fragile human, and your companions, take the fight to the much larger and more hardy monsters in an effort to beat their pants off and rob them of their bodies to beat even bigger and nastier monters, or all their family, you know, kill the kids with dads head.  Toukiden 2 takes the twist on the game that you're hunting demons and to loot said nasties you must purify their bodies to harvest their resources.  While that seems like a fairly straight forward premise the game throws some curveballs your way in character builds, armor sets, elements and resistances, weapon types, mitama, and the new demon hand. For those who do not know mitama are ancient spirits the player gathers to help them fight the demons, they are sorted into types and have skills based on their type and each has a set of support skills to.  In the first game these were exclusively slotted into weapons, but now in Toukiden 2 you can insert one into your demon hand to gain an additional CD boost, and one into your armor that will grant you a defensive CD.  What is the demon hand you say?  I'm glad you asked.

One of the new additions in Toukiden 2 is the demon hand, in other words its a magical wrist mounted green extendy hand (think those gel slappers) that you can use to close the gap on demons, or tear off body parts.  Its tearing function takes the place of the Unity Gague from the first one and is now an individual gauge based off the players contribution to teamwork.  Once the gauge is full, just activate it and rip them parts off, this is also the easiest way to fully remove a body part and prevent miasma regeneration, and you get bonus loot for it as well.  And if all that wasn't enough the demon hand allows all players to get a height advantage and take combat into the air when a player launches themselves at an Oni.  Overall its a significant improvement in gameplay and a welcome addition.

The game has improved upon itself offering 15 new montsers, mini bosses, hundreds of new armor pieces and weapons, 2 new weapons the whip blade and sword and shield, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.  New vanity items, and open world feel with no loading screens, no more map transitions, and the ability to fast travel from select areas is very nice as well.  Plus you can change equipment without needing to go back to town if you go to one of your bases established in the outworld.  Additionally I would be remiss if I did not mention the fluid quest system, though at times it is difficult to manage and identify where to go.  The game also flaunts a miasma gague that you need to keep an eye on or your character will end up in some serious trouble in the otherworld due to overexposure to the poisonous substance.

Now if all of this does sound interesting to you, but you're still not sold on it, Playstation players can play the multiplayer for free via the Toukiden 2 Free Alliances version of the game, and the best part is if you upgrade to a full copy your saved data will transfer with it so you won't loose progress, which gives an appealing way to get friends into the game as well.

While normally I wouldn't recommend Koei Techmo games to those who haven't played them and don't enjoy good mindless platformers, the depth of monster fighting tactics and plethora of options makes this a must buy for anyone who is a fan of the genre.  With all that being said Toukiden 2 gets 8 Slayers, out of 10.

Rantology: What BioWare did to Mass Effect Andromeda and why you should care.

So, over the weekend BioWare issued an update that they will no longer be supporting single player updates.  This news comes after they have fixed the majority of bugs and glitches in the single player game which includes the facial animations (full disclosure this is not something I personally experienced to the degree that most people claim it to be), and the Hainly Abrams thing which I have previously addressed.  I did write a, as of  yet, unposted review of Andromeda, but I may get around to doing that later this week (btw I gave the game a solid 8/10).  That being said, considering the game is a little under 6 months old at this point I'm going to assume that everyone has finished it and I will be discussing spoilers in this post, but incase that's not enough....

********************************SPOILER ALERT*********************************

Now, with that out of the way one of the biggest things that this hits is from a story perspctive, see for those of you who have completed the story, you'll know that the 5th Ark (the Quarians and other minor species like Drell, Hanar, Elcor, additional Volus, Krogan, and Batarians has arriaved in Andromeda, but is at a currently undisclosed location due to issues, presumably from the Scourge that plagues the Andromeda system, and their pathfinder is dealing with the issue.  Now this brings forward the question of their fate, and the fate of their ark on the surface, but bellow that it makes us wonder if there are additional threats, or if the Scourge isn't what it appears to be and something is controlling it, and what the interest in the Quarian Ark is specifically.  Furthermore, in a post credits scene, a kett known as the Primus, who served as the Archons second in command, is observing Meridian, letting us know that we haven't defeated the kett, especially since we know the Archon was considered a rogue threat who stepped out of line in Andromeda to pursue Remnant technology, as we know the kett only seem to be able to absorb biological material, and not synthetic (possible resurgence of the Geth to fight back at them?)  Finally, the third major question left unanswered is the Remnant, who made them, what their purpose is outside of teraforming, is the AI on H-047c related to them in any fashion?  And while a few smaller questions are left unanswered (specifically in regards to the Angara and Krogan) they are nowhere as near as important to the above, at least in my mind.

While story questions are all important, we also need to realize what this can mean for Mass Effect as a whole.  While Andromeda was never release with a specific plan for the series in mind and meant to be fluid, I doubt anyone ever meant for it to be abandoned, especially considering we have been without a Mass Effect game for going on 5 years prior to its release.Yes, we still have other BioWare games like Dragon Age 4 to look forward to, but they just don't fill the void left in our hearts. Why is this happening?  Well from best I can tell it is because of the overwhelming negative feedback focusing on the glitches in terms of facial animations and dialogue, which while I won't say didn't exist, but were never as large of a part of the game as people (mostly those who hadn't touched the game in my experience) would have you believe.  See, when something like this happens on a lesser known series, or a game that is widely regarded as a cherished title by the masses, it doesn't get the amount of negative attention that a game like Mass Effect would with its rampant fanbase of overzealous players.  For example, Dark Souls has a large number of glitches in their invasion PvP system, ones that will actually break the game and make it impossible to have a fair and balanced game, but the response from the internet is one of disbelief and cries for it to be fixed, not widespread criticism, where Andromeda was laughed at relentlessly for a small glitch that didn't break the game, and by most accounts was less than 1% of the overall experience.  Now I'm not saying they both don't need to be fixed, and say what you will for modern release it now, patch it later culture, but the fact that it is an option to be able to fix it is a good them.  But we can also look to the response from the communities for the efforts to fix their glitches.  From Software spent a large chunk of time investigating and banning players who exploited this glitch, and as of the time of this writing I'm not aware of any patches to fix this issue, only to be met with overall praise from the community for such a proactive approach, while Andromeda was met with disdain and criticism for taking less than 3 months to almost completely eliminate the problem, which I need remind you didn't render entire aspects of the game almost unplayable.

This brings me to my last point of why you should really care.  Andromeda has set a prescendence, and not the one they were hoping to.  What this proves is that with enough complaints, trolling, rampant meme sharing, and overall shitty attitudes to what really was a solid game, you can effectively bury it and a franchise, because when you complain to an extent and harass a developer you are attacking their heart and soul.  Many developers hold these games close to their hearts, as they can be working on them for close to 70-80 hours a week for over 2 years.  These games are their children, their babies.  They care about them and want to see them grow just as much as we do, but the sheer amount of harassment that Andromeda received, especially from people who never played the game (you know who you are), was too much.  This will only serve to tell people that they can keep doing this to other games and series that they either don't like or have some sort of issue they don't like and it is dangerous. Things like this can lead someone to depression, which is a very serious issue, and while I'm not saying we should ignore issues in our games, we should raise those concerns, but we should do them in a constructive way.  Positive feedback is much more beneficial than negative, think of the last time both has happened and what the outcome was for you?  Now apply that same to these games and their devs, and keep in mind that these games are their passion.

We all love video games, there is no question about that, but the thing is how we address them matters so much more.  The issue surrounding Andromeda is a difficult one, but I believe that we need to learn from it so we call all grow, both the community and devs.  See you next time.

Destiny 2 Beta

*Full disclosure, I played and wrote this the day after the Beta but never got around to posting it for whatever reason.  So with that kept in mind I still wanted to share my thoughts on how I saw it and what is coming this September.*

So, I've made it no secret, for those who know me, that I play Destiny on a somewhat religious basis.  As in, I play it every week and have cleared most of the content and am probably floating around a 95% completion of the game.  So naturally I logged on this week to the PS4 preload exclusive of the Destiny 2 Beta.  And really all I can say is that I'm honestly amazed so far, and not in a bad way.

The Beta offered up 5 things in total, two of them were timed/limited access, the rest are open access for the duration of it.  We got exactly what was shown at E3, 2 multiplayer modes and a strike on open access, the first story mission "Homecoming" on limited access, and a new social space dubbed "The Farm" on a timed trial for an hour on Sunday.  While the content wasn't quite up to what I would have liked (I sincerely wanted a small patrol area to get a real feel for the size of the game, though the strike did do a good job of this), it was still valuable content.  The strike, The Inverted Spire, centered around the Red Legions attempts to retrieve Vex weapons technology from one of their minds hidden beneath the ground on Nessus.  A rather long strike that starts in what I'm assuming is a patrol area, and it was rather smart of Bungie to not give us access to sparrows during this or I would have never actually finished it, though I did encounter some pikes and was able to explore a bit.  The strike shows off how massive Destiny 2 really seems to be, at least if this strike is anything similar to others that we currently see in Destiny right now.

The walk/descent to your destination is quite significant and shouldn't be taken lightly as you needed to traverse literal giant drills to get where you're going.  Another thing that really spoke to how committed Bungie is to Destinys long term viability is how alive this time around feels.  When we loaded in I experienced a couple of different things at different times, from the previously mentioned pikes, to battles between Fallen and Cabal, or Fallen and Vex, and even Vex and Cabal occurring at different places.  The only ways out of the landing zones that I checked were blocked off by walls to prevent players from going to far (or so I'm guessing), but I still had my thirst for curiosity quenched.

Crucible was another matter completely.  While I like the idea of 4v4, I do wish that 6v6 could still remain a thing or even get bumped to 8v8.  Crucible in the Beta was offered in two modes on two different maps (I can't remember their names but nothing really striking stands out about them, they are fun though).  Casual was control, while competitive was the new game mode Countdown.  Countdown was really interesting and reminded me A LOT of Call of Duty, but more hectic and more decisive, especially for the attacking team.  I can really see it being the new norm in Trials, dubbed Trials of the Nine in Destiny 2.  While fun, I did find myself having a lot more fun during the strike.

Finally the last large thing offered was a new social space known as The Farm.  A genuinely open space, with lots of little things to explore and fun to be had, it was nice trying to guess who would be where.  There is a small soccer field in which players can play a rocket league esque game to 3.  The Vanguard have a barn, and Tess Everress has a weird tent thing.  Oh and a holographic engram which was cool.  There was also what appeared to be a new type of sparrow like vehicle, which would be kinda cool just to open up options for travel.

Overall the beta was very well done and definitely has me excite for what's to come.  I hope that it is not a standalone sample because what I saw has true promise.

Rantology: Having Fun

So the other day I caught myself turning on my XBox One for the first time since I had moved back in April, and while I admit it did take me a shameful amount of time to turn it back on and play it again, I don't regret me decision.  See, I've actually been keeping plenty busy on my other consoles lately, with Mario Kart 8 coming out on switch, Destiny starting their Age of Triumph celebrations (of which I still need to finish off my record book), and other assorted titles filling out the rest of my time with a sprinkling of WoW just to keep me in check.  Now, that's not to say that I regret my decision to have not turned on my console, but I feel I have neglected it for too long.  That being said I loaded up some Halo 5: Guardians, and just dived into my favorite new game mode Warzone Firefight.

Now Warzone Firefight launched sometime last summer, and while I was fully aware of its release, I was too busy playing other games at the time, I don't remember what games, but it was something I kinda wrote off as something I'd get to later, Well now that later has arrived and dear god I don't know what took me so long.  The game mode is absolutely brilliant in all the right ways, the usage of REQs, the team based goal oriented combat, in fact the only negative thing I can say about it is that respawn timers can get too long late in the game, but even that is offset by the weapons you've unlocked to that point.  However, as much fun as I was having I felt dirty for enjoying my time with the game.  I felt like I was somehow degrading myself for playing a game so many fans disliked, a game that was criticized for the removal of local coop so it could achieve a smooth 60 fps, and I will fully admit I was one of those dissenters at first, yet, as the Halo nutjob I am, went out and purchased Halo 5 at launch and at least gave it a shot, and while I like the direction the story went, despite some of its previous misgivings in Halo 4.  As dirty as I felt though, I just didn't care because at my core I was actually having fun.

See that's something that I feel like people have lost sight on in recent years, especially when it comes to gaming.  We all want this huge awesome new IP to launch with open world, and crafting, and all these other things to give us freedom in our worlds because a handful of games did it well and we're constantly under the illusion that that is where success lays, but I've come to disagree with that and instead I put forth a new idea: instead of chasing the heels of previous success, or criticizing something for every graphical misgiving, or a person for their taste, let's just all have fun.  It's really not that difficult of a concept to embrace, all you need to do is if you see someone enjoying something you don't, just ignore it, let it go.  Don't tell them you hate it, don't tell them why it's bad, don't criticize it for what it is or isn't, let them enjoy something.

Oddly enough this isn't the first time I've found myself in this situation either, with many releases over the last couple of years I've found myself either having to defend my interest in the game, justify why I would ever play such a thing, or I've just felt ashamed for playing something that I am genuinely having fun playing simply because the gaming community as a whole dislikes it for whatever reason.  A couple of very recent examples are Mass Effect Andromeda and Ghost Recon Wildlands.  It would be no small secret to the people who know me that I am a HUGE Mass Effect fan, I have art on my walls, clothing in my drawers, hell I even splurged on the $130 Pathfinder backpack, $100 DieCast Nomad ND1, and I'm currently in the middle of purchasing the FigPins.  Needless to say, I LOVE Mass Effect, it's wonderful and I practically disappeared when Andromeda came out this year, starting the game a mere week and a half before I moved, whilst packing mind you.  I loved the game, and had a ton of fun playing it, and while there were things I was looking forward to that weren't there, such as dynamic outposts, being able to land on dozens of worlds, and a larger selection of romantic options.  All those put aside I still enjoyed the game, and had hours of fun playing it despite having to defend my interest in the game due to its glitches and facial animations, both issues that in my playthrough were a maximum of  maybe 30 minutes in a 50 hour experience.

I felt assaulted and wronged because how dare I have fun when a few people put videos on YouTube for reddit and other meta sites to laugh at and criticize the game for it. How dare I enjoy something that let down their expectations, people who didn't play the game and had no interest in it in the first place.  How dare I have fun.  How dare I enjoy myself.  The same issue revolves around Ghost Recon Wildlands.  The reviews came out for it and were less than positive, the game was repetitive, the open world felt like it made the player travel vast amounts for no real reason, and the narrative is too shallow, but I found myself in the same place, having fun.  I've enjoyed my time with Ghost Recon, I love taking down bases, getting into firefights driving around Bolivia, flying up as high as I can and parachuting back down to Earth.  I'm loving every minute of it and I've actually been putting off completing it because I don't want it to be over.

Yet it was in a PSN group chat that I realized I shouldn't feel bad for enjoying something, if its fun then why should I care what people say about it? Lately we've all been obsessing over review scores and graphical improvement, and making sure that everything is tippy toppy to the point that anything but the very best isn't good enough.  People complained about Arkham Knight's graphical and game play issues, but I still had fun, I may have been frustrated at points, but I enjoyed the ride through the game.  People complained about Destiny and it's lack of story content and it's MMO-esque approach to gameplay, yet here we are almost 3 years later with the sequel getting ready to release and new players are joining every day, something must be keeping those players coming back. Another much criticized game over its lifetime is World of Warcraft, being one of the largest games of all time leading up to the 2010 release of Cataclysm that rebuilt the world from the ground up and saw many players straight up leave the game after being so invested for so long, other games stepped in place to acquire some of it's player base like Rift, SWtOR, Guild Wars 2, and more recently Final Fantasy XIV.  Yet many remained loyal to the game for a myriad of reasons, even throughout the Warlords of Draenor expansion, which some refer to as "The Dark Days of WoW".  Yet still, the rush of getting new equipment, enjoyment of friends, and conquering bosses still remained fun to players to world over, these players didn't leave because they were still enjoying themselves in one way or another.

Now none of this is to say we should be happy and content with whatever the industry hands us and just "be grateful we're getting games", but we certainly shouldn't talk down on someone who enjoys something.  As a long time fan of the Koei's Warrior franchise I know very well what a double sided dose of criticism looks like.  It takes a certain sense of mindless grinding to get any sort of real enjoyment out of those games, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, in fact sometimes a mindless grind is exactly what I need to destress after a long day, I find it relaxing and fun, so what.  We all got into this insane hobby around the central idea that games and gaming is fun.  No one started off day one out of the gate as being the best and min maxing every character to be the mathematical best at whatever, we all have our own unique playstyles, and our own unique approaches to everything, so why should our enjoyment be any different. Gaming takes all types, some like graphics, some like stories, some like mechanics, some like to min max and feel powerful, some are just tournament players who dedicate everything they have to being the best at their game, and that's all okay.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that we need to stop getting into petty arguments and judging each other.  We need to sit down and just appreciate gaming a bit more, appreciate gaming for what it is, something we have fun with.  Not everything needs to be an artistic masterpiece, not everything needs to appeal to everything, glitches happen, and someone is going to disagree with you about Ubisofts Spiderman game on PS4, but who cares.  What really matters is that you're having fun, and if you see someone enjoying something you don't like here's a little piece of advice: don't attack them for it (unless of course that thing is discriminatory in any way that is), they're people like you. Let people have fun.