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.

Wonder Woman Review

Okay, holy shit, wow.  Like damn.  I honestly am having some issues coming up with words for this one here, but I'm gonna keep this review short to avoid spoilers and because people really just need to see this movie for themselves, and wasting time reading this isn't going to accomplish that goal.  Long story short though is this movie is amazing.  It's everything I wanted and a whole lot of stuff I didn't even know I wanted too.  There were times when even I was almost brought to tears by how powerful the movie was.  Okay, okay, okay I'm getting ahead of myself.  First things first, the woman of the fucking decade.

Oh you thought I was going to show Wonder Woman?  Sorry I should have made it a bit more clear, but this person right here, Patty Jenkins, gets all the credit for this one.  You see Ms Jenkins here is the director and visionary behind this cinematic masterpiece.  Before this she was still relatively small time having only one other major Hollywood movie under her name, and that being 2003's Monster.  So really no one knew what to expect from her, but holy shit it paid off.  Gal Gadot also deserves a huge shout out here too because she made Diana feel truly larger than life and probably the most heroic super hero we've seen on the big screen so far, and yes I am including all the Marvel and 3rd party superheros too.  See in the movie she makes it clear that she not only stands for protecting the innocent, but also that one should act and fight no matter the situation, because refusal to only allows your enemies and those who would do innocent people harm to gain ground.  In fact this is something that keeps happening, and the couple of times it doesn't things go terribly.

But surprisingly the movie isn't pro war in any sense of the statement, in fact its about as anti-war as these movies can be, and to further that the movie boldly presents the reality that women are powerful and independent and should not be held back.  In fact its not Just Diana that shows this, but one of the antagonists who goes by the name Doctor Poison too.  The fact that both these characters are self motivated/empowered is huge.  Diana even goes so far as to give Etta Candy inspiration that she can be more than just an assistant, she can be strong and brave too.  Something else that I felt spoke very loudly in the movie is that Themyscira, the home of the Amazons, isn't just one race, it has women of all different races and skin tones in all different rolls on the island, saying proudly that "All women are brave, powerful, and independent" which is huge.  The citizens there are diverse, like when they were finding people for the movie they didn't look at anyone and say "well you can't be an Amazon because you're too short/big/tall/strong/weak".

Finally the last thing I really wanted to get out there was the cinematic choices in the movie.  Don't get me wrong, everything else was beautiful, the music, the cast, the script, the action, and the comedy.  No, the reason I want to talk about this is because the way that slowdowns, and camera shots are used to focus on how truly spectacular and central Diana is makes this movie truly step into the next level, and takes it beyond just great.  What I'm talking about is during the fight scenes not only Diana, but all of the major players (almost exclusively Amazons I believe) are slowed down to "bullet time" speeds to showcase their impressive reactions dominating presence on the battlefield.  And these aren't doctored to make the women "ideal" or to have them "look hot", they done and focused in a manner in which to show that the are truly powerful women who can not only hold their own but also dominate the field.  Specifically there is a scene where Diana lands after being in the air and in a very visible moment her thigh jiggles, its not just a small thing either, we're talking whole screen jiggly thigh for all to see, something that never would have happened with almost any other director.

Needless to say this is a powerful and wonderful movie, and while I really don't like the idea of a perfect score because I feel everything can be improved on in some way I just don't see it here.  Wonder Woman gets 5 female empowering Amazons, out of 5.