next gen yawn

we finally got some info on the new generation of consoles. not that I will be able to afford any of them any time soon. but it is still interesting too look ahead at what is to come. here are my thoughts:

- xbox series x, stupid name. honestly, this was the best they came up with? what were the rejected names then? I'll just call it the xb2.

- kinda like the shape of the xb2, but it reminds me a lot of one of those fancy boxes that expensive liquor comes in.

- why does the xb2 have such a huge open grate at the top, thats gonna be fun to clean from dust

- the ps5 controller looks cool with the 2 tone color but just like the ps3, they are adding a bunch of gimmicky crap to it which i dont like

- the xb2 controller is just the xbone controller again, boring

- how about some back buttons for the controllers? rgb lighting? hand cooling? slide out keypad? nope

- war of the flop count. i dont care, i feel like our graphics now are good enough and i have no interest in gaming in 4k anytime soon

- i like these fast ssd's to reduce loading times and such, looks like the ps5 has the upper hand here

- full backwards compatibility for the xb2 on all xbone games & current bc 360 games which is awesome! al my xbone games will run, run better and i can replace my xbone console.

- xbone peripherals will be compatible with xb2. yay so i wont need to buy a second controller for the xb2 for couch co-op

- ps5 will have limited backwards compatibility with only some ps4 games that will work. this is very disappointing. i was really really hoping for ps3 bc

- price is rumored to be quite high, that will mean i will definitely not get one in the first year of launch 

overall it is very disappointing so far with regards to the new consoles. lots of awesome quality of life and bc stuff but nothing really seems like a must have new console/feature. so at this point for the 1080p gamer like me, the only real reason to get one of these new consoles is because they wont make games for the older ones after a while.

im not convinced by vr gaming at this point, and i believe one of the reasons why it hasnt taken off properly is high equipment costs for vr. was hoping for a more mainstream lower cost new vr tech for these consoles.

anyway, lets wait and see what other info comes out. hopefully there is something more to get excited by other than grafixxxxx and whoa dedicated 3d audio bro xd

a new year eol

it's been a while aaaaand there is a bit of a pandemic going on around the world. home at the moment, in lockdown, lost my job, kinda sux... so how have u been?

uuuhh, let's talk about something else. i haven't been gaming a whole lot lately but i did try a couple of titles this year.

monster hunter world - oh boy was i disappointed with this one. i expected a fun story filled action adventure game where you fight some kick ass monsters within a beautiful magical world. instead i got some semi-anime mmorpg that is so overly complicated, boring, weird, unpausable, tedious game in a bland and generic world.

shantae half genie hero: pretty fun side scroller but the music is kinda annoying.

dreamfall chapters: not a whole lot of gameplay in this game and some of the visuals are pretty bad. cool story though.

dauntless: pretty interesting but feels very laggy and incomplete. poor man's monster hunter world i guess.

life is strange: my word this is some millennial emo touchy feely soppy story bullshit.

victor vran: really enjoying this one. kinda like path of exile but a bit more arcady.

nothing really stuck however. played some blops iiii now during the lockdown. same old same issues but was rather fun shooting people in the face. oh yeh, cod warzone was released but i don't do battle royale so no. i still have some other games to try. uncharted is now free on playstation, might try that. i also got earthfall, mothergunship, call of cthulu, fable and project cars on xbox. should keep me busy for a while.

hope you are all doing ok!

ps4 impressions from an xbox gamer

i mentioned this in my doa stranding post that i bought a ps4 console recently. very late to the party but hey. i'm an xbox gamer. i got into console gaming with the 360. i love that console and played on it even when the next generation consoles were released. then i decided to get the xbox one instead of the ps4 because a) i already had a bunch of 360 games that were backwards compatible with the xbone. b) didnt like the ps3 or ps2. c) it was cheaper than the ps4. d) i had an active xbox live subscription and friends online on the service. e) i like gamerscore, not trophies

i dont make a lot of money and consoles are expensive, so simply buying a second console is not that simple. anyway, i have been curious about some of the exclusives and i got a good deal on a slim bundle lol. here are some observations about the ps4 'experience' from a long time xbox gamer.

what i liked:
- the controller has a nice premium feel. it feels solid and oozes quality. analog sticks also feel pretty good, i hated to ps3 controller sticks.
- the console is nice and thin with no power brick. probably similar to the xbox one s but i dont know, i still have the phat xbox one with the power brick.
- dashboard graphics, images and font are nice and sharp.
- you can make simple offline profiles. you cant do this on the xbox one, each profile requires a microsoft account. you can play as a guest but nothing is saved.
- game install sizes do seem to be a lot smaller than xbox one. some games dont even require installations in order to play them.

what i didnt like:
- the console is quite noisy, which was a surprise.
- the options button placement/size on the controller is really awkward. with a game like death stranding, you need to use that button a lot and it is small and too close to the touchpad. i have to actually concentrate when i want to press it, where with all other button press it flows nicely.
- controller battery really doesnt last long. even with a dimmed light bar and no sound output, i think the battery only last about 10-12 hours. by comparison, on aa batteries my xbox controller easily lasts 4 time longer. so you have to charge it very frequently which links into my next annoyance...
- the usb controller charge cable supplied is waaaaay to short. why the hell couldnt the have made the charge cable long enough so that i can still game while my controller is charging? now i have to buy a usb extension cable in order to do that or wait for my controller to charge before playing.
- the wireless audio streaming to headphones from the controller sometimes crackles or stutters. xbox one has the same feature but i dont recall ever losing audio or experiencing issues with audio playback like it get with the ps4.
- i do not like the speaker in the controller. i dont want it and it freaks out my dog.
- the dashboard software looks like the psp dashboard that is almost 15 years old. i mean really, it looks so basic and boring and has apparently not changed at all since launch. and i find the notifications really annoying for some reason. even the store looks pretty much the same as the basic slow one from the ps3.
- no backwards compatibility. no streaming through ps now is not good enough.
- power and eject buttons are too small and not clearly labeled.
- the console enclosure is too tight around the usb ports. this makes it impossible for most flash drives to fit, and plugging in the charging cable is very awkward.
- download speeds from the playstation network is pretty slow when compared to xbox one and/or pc.
- the game prices on the south-african playstation store are on average a lot higher than the local xbox store.
- the ps4 does not play well with my hdmi hub. i get no output from my ps4 when being passed through the hub. i dont have this issue with any of my other hdmi devices.
- what is the point of the touchpad on the controller? nothing seems to make use of it besides the button functionality.
- what is the point of the light bar? it doesnt seem to have an actual purpose and can be quite distracting while playing in the dark. also wastes battery power.
- the onscreen keyboard is ass.

all in all i'm a bit underwhelmed with the ps4. people were making it out like the ps4 is soooooo superior to the xbox one. i mean a lot of it is subjective but the xbox one will stay my primary console, even if the ps4 is technically a bit more powerful.

doa stranding

death stranding. a strange game made by some big shot japanese man and his studio. this man was the creative mind behind the metal gear games. as some background, the only metal gear game i've played was a bit of mgs 2 on the ps2. it was ok but i thought the gameplay was boring and one dimensional. many years later when other mgs games were released, they looked interesting so i looked up a story recap of the metal gear series. turns out the story is so complicated and convoluted, i just decided not to bother. the other reason why i wasnt interested enough was the very strange comedy in those games, i remember a video of one mgs game where there is this soldier taking a dump under a barrel in the middle of an active warzone. wat?

fast forward to 2019. because of my lack of interest for the metal gear series, i did not pay much attention to death stranding. however, when the reviews and launch trailer came out, i was really intrigued since it looked like something new, a game that is different than the hordes being released. as mentioned in a previous post of mine, i was even considering buying a ps4 in order to play the game. well i actually did, thanks black friday. truth is that there does seem to be some nice exclusives on ps4 and i got a bundle with a couple of games included, so at least i didnt really get the console for just one game.

anyway, lets cut to the chase... do i like death stranding? if the title didnt give you a clue then here it is, no not really. best way to explain is to describe my experience (so far). i fired up the game and was treated to a game that starts off like a movie, with sound and visuals that are technically brilliant. i'm interested, thrilled and start to play. i sit through some pretty cinematics and the game throws some beautiful scenery at me, followed by some music that sets the tone for the game very nicely. i'm blown away by the magic and polish of it all. finally i'm off to make my first proper delivery. turns out you have to keep your character balanced, manage your center of gravity, since your cargo can make you fall over. i thought 'ok this is cool but kinda annoying' and carried on. i then realized that my shoes have durability and that they wear out. i thought 'ok, why would they make that a thing... kinda annoying' and carried on. i was introduced to the Like/Social system in the game. alright, that seems interesting but i'm not sure i like where this is going. then i get introduced to my bb and the bt's. this was exciting the first time because it is so intense and you don't know what is going on and it gets all crazy and you panic. so i carried on, and on, and on and then after many hours i decided that i was going to retire as a delivery man and not carry on with this boring, social media experimental journey of a game.

but why you may ask? like most of my posts, lets make some lists. first i would like to start with the pros of this game:
- amazing visuals
- amazing sound & camera work
- great story
- interesting new game mechanics and concepts
- highly polished

now onto the cons, which is unfortunately what this is all about:
- you play a glorified delivery man. pretty much all you do are fetch and deliver missions.
- everything is overly complicated. your shoes wear out, you craft items and structures but in different ways. sometimes you can do things, sometimes you cant. many buttons are contextual and it gets confusing. i consider myself a fairly intelligent gamer, hardly ever struggle in games. but there is one mission where i was introduced on how to build a bridge. it took me 20min to figure out that what i had to do was to complete someone else's bridge using materials that i apparently have on me (sometimes) through this confusing interface instead of trying to build my own bridge like you would normally do. your cargo gets damaged by impacts, rain & snow but you can repair it using repair spray... wtf? you can pee for no reason whatsoever. and it took me hours to figure out that i can actually quickly unequip stuff by tapping the corresponding button on the dpad. the game never tells you this or maybe i just missed because it got lost among the other hundreds of text messages, emails, prompts and dialog lines that pop up constantly. you have to manage where on your body you put different pieces of cargo. you can wear sunglasses but they dont seem to do anything. you have to manage your stamina and rest every now and then, some equipment uses batteries and have to be charged or stored. vehicles have durability but there is no number or gauge to see what the level of wear is. sometimes you cannot build a structure because there is no network coverage even though you brought all the stations in the surrounding areas online. there is this whole email system that seems to be a complete waste of time. etc etc.
- your bb is annoying af. every time you fall over, it gets submerged or make a mistake your bb (baby strapped to your chest that helps you see the bt ghosts) gets stressed and starts crying. this is already fking annoying and the crying sound comes FROM YOUR CONTROLLER. who the hell thought that was a good idea? but now you have to stop whatever you are doing and sooth the baby by rocking you controller back and forth. is this a parenting simulator? and no, i do not find a half developed fetus in a jar cute in any way. it is creepy as hell.
- too many weird visuals and suggestive things. for example, when you die and resurrect yourself. the camera proceeds to enter norman reedus' mouth, goes down his throat, shows a baby in his stomach (which sometimes has his naked butt to you), gives you a thumbs up and the camera then goes through the baby's mouth. why? maybe it is just me, but this imagery churns my stomach and i hate it. another character eats bugs the whole time (and so do you). another character gets into the shower with you and gets way too close. you create various grenades from your poo, pee and shower water. your blood has special properties and your employer harvests it from you while you sleep for other people to use in r&d weapons. the list just goes on and on.
- too many mini cinematics. here i'm not talking about the cinematics that progress the story, i'm talking about all the mini cinematics during gameplay. when it starts to rain heavily, stop everything and show mini cutscene. when you enter a bt area, stop everything and show mini cutscene. make a delivery, show hologram cutscene where people just wont shut up. enter private room, show 2 mini cutscenes. take a shower, show 3-4 mini cutscenes. exit private room, show 2 mini cutscenes and a full cutscene. after a while it becomes so frustrating to have to skip these things constantly and some of them you cant. if i have to watch the cutscene with norman connecting a place to the chiral network again, i'm going to scream.
- bt area encounters. in the beginning of the game these encounters are really annoying because you try to sneak through this field of enemies you can't really see. or you try to drive through the area with a vehicle in a hurry, just to have a bt appear right in front of you and halt you in your tracks. later in the game you start to realize that the most efficient and fastest way to get through a bt area is to simply stand still, let them drag you down, bt monster spawns, you just run to the edge of the area where the floaty bits are and then everything disappears and the area is free of bt's for the foreseeable future. or just let the monster eat you, you die, resurrect yourself and carry on.
- hipster music. the first time a song popped up as i was travelling on foot i was like 'hey that is kinda cool, we get some mood music while we traverse'. you soon realize that all of these moments in the game use songs from the same hipster artist and they all sound exactly the same to me. later in the game, these music bits do not even remotely convey the mood that the character would likely have and actually breaks immersion. and there is no option to turn this music off! ugh...
- it feels like you are the only person in the world doing anything. you are the one delivering all the packages, doing all the work, convincing people and just getting orders from people that are sitting comfy in their offices back in the capital. and the people you bring stuff to, cant even be bothered to come and greet you, just talk to you via hologram. you get treated like an annoying postman and just receive a little pat on the back from the company every now and then saying 'good job little buddy, no do it again over there'.
- the world is lifeless. the whole game world basically looks like iceland with a few minimalist corporate buildings here and there. there are no animals, you hardly ever encounter other actual human beings (and when you do they don't speak), no birds, no insects (beside the health bugs).
- the social aspect (multiplayer) sucks. i get the feeling that this was supposed to be this game's big unique draw. it is the thing that most reviewers seem to praise. the game has this theme of connecting people, working together for a better tomorrow etc. it is there, it works, i get it. i just hate it. i don't like social media. i don't get the point of twitter. putting yourself out there, desperate to get likes and retweets. seeking other peoples approval and measuring your own life, successes and failures against others on the internet. it disgusts and bores me. death stranding's world currency is Likes. you deliver packages, you get likes. you put up signs or build structures and hope that other players on your server give you a bunch of likes. characters in the game give you a thumbs up and some like in cringy fashion during cutscenes. you come across a timefall shelter or other structure in the world and you see they go 1500 like from other players. wooohooo how trendy and pathetic can we get. it feels like i picked up the facebook edition of the game by accident and should have gotten the regular one instead. after a while i just couldnt stand it anymore and carried on playing offline. yeah i know it would help to find a bike, paved road, safe house or generator left there by other players that you could benefit from but in all honestly it just makes me feel bad. cant help but feel that these other players have all these resources and stuff that they can just give stuff away and build cool things but i cant and have to leech off others to get anywhere.
- prepping and planning for journeys are a waste of time. the game does its best to try and convince you to prepare for your journeys, plot routes, take equipment to traverse difficult areas, build structures out in the wild. it is all a waste of time and in most cases will make your journey more difficult. you see, everything you take with you has weight that you have to carry. so if you carry some ladders, pcc's, anchors, weapons and materials with you to "help" yourself, you make running harder and slower and you are more likely to fall over, damage your cargo or even lose it in a river. you dont need any of it. just grab an extra set of boots and maybe a blood bag. i already explained how you wont need to fight the bt's and during boss fights, they literally just give you everything you need in the battle area. there is always an easy way to get up or down a path without ladders of anchors. if you use long range trikes you are unlikely to need a generator between stops, just rest in a private room. you dont need to build bridges across rivers/streams, there is always a shallow crossing nearby. and you dont need to plot routes, you can pretty much just bee-line to the marker on your compass.
- vehicles vs on foot. another annoying thing about the game is that the route to some destinations are fine for vehicles and others really, really arent. but you never know ahead of time. so what ends up happening is that sometimes you decide i'm going to take a vehicle for the delivery and the terrain ends up being so rocky that you have to either leave your vehicle behind (losing values resources you spent on making it), take it back to your garage and return on foot taking a lot time or you tough it out, bumping/scraping/smashing your way up the path over the rocks with your vehicle. this of course ends up taking soooo much longer than if you were just on foot and you will probably end up wrecking the vehicle anyway. not fun at all. of course it also happens that sometimes you are convinced a vehicle is not good for a particular route and then about midway realizing that a vehicle would have been a much better option, so you just hate yourself for not bringing one.
- the game frequently forces you to backtrack long distances for some bullshit reasons. feels like they were really just trying to pad the game time.
- the main antagonist is not threatening and kinda silly. higgs, the main badguy is just not much of a villain. he wears this silly gold mask which serves no purpose other than he thinks it makes him look badass i presume. he summons these bt's which you can in most cases simply run away from and they disappear. the actor that plays him looks and sounds like a scrawny beta male.
- norman/sam. the main character is kinda stupid. he hardly shows any expression, doesnt seem to have any interest in what he is doing or what is going on around him. doesn't talk much, doesn't like to be touched and is not interesting. everyone around him seems to be smarter than him and they have to explain every little thing to him. also during all my time in the game, very little was revealed about the character. norman reedus also seems to play the character as if he is half asleep or stoned the whole time. i think they were trying to go for silent and broody but it just falls flat. he ends up not being enough of a character to care about and identify with, and too much norman reedus to act as a silent "you" character like master chief is for example.

what ended up happening was that after about 15 hours of playing the game, i still really wanted to see the cinematics and how the story turned out but i couldnt bear to endure the grindy gameplay loop for another 20 to 30 hours. i simply felt that the gameplay was not worth the time and effort. it wasnt fun, more like a chore with the reward being story development now and then. so i did what i've never done before. i gave up on playing the game, and watched the rest of the cutscenes on youtube instead. and i gotta tell you, it was great! overall i really enjoyed the story, even if some of it makes no sense and it is rather weird by my standards. i dont really have the intention of playing the game any further but never say never.

so yeah, i guess some people will love the game, some will hate it, some will just give up like me. my recommendation is borrow or rent it first if you can, try it out and see. or just watch it on youtube. of course i'm disappointed but i'm glad i tried it, it is something different. but perhaps a little too different for my taste.

diablo 4, impossible to please the fans

i dont think anyone was surprised by the announcement of diablo 4. it has been quite a while since diablo 3 (2012) and the announcement was leaked before blizzcon. great news right? well i dont know about that. i will get to my own opinion/impression later but first lets look at what the fans say about it.

if you have been keeping up with diablo games at all, you will know that apparently diablo 2 players hate diablo 3. most diablo "fans" did not like the changes that were made from 2 to 3. even after the expansion overhauled the loot system, added more areas, difficulties, characters, pvp and endgame content. the "fans" still werent happy. they say things like the graphics are too cartoony, no skill points, no stats points, loot is not rewarding enough, my character is not unique enough and diablo 2 was so much better. why did you have to change things?

there is this flood of people making it sound like diablo 2 was the best arpg and diablo game. that d4 should just do what d2 did and walk back the changes from d3. they say d3 is such a bad game and they just stuck with d2 instead etc.

look, i'm not a huge diablo 3 fan but i think most of these people have forgotten that d2 had some really bad/annoying issues and that d3 made A LOT of improvements over d2. i know because after i played d3 for a while not too long ago, i went back and played some d2 for a few days. it is also worth noting that i did play quite a lot of d2 "back in the day" and did enjoy it. my conclusion from my recent excursion though is that i simply cannot play d2 anymore after playing d3, it is waaaaaaay too annoying and cumbersome. and i really like playing old games. i played through red faction 2 a few weeks ago and it was really fun.

anyway, here are some really crappy and annoying things in diablo 2 that diablo 3 does not have or does much better:
- no proper minimap. yes there is a map but it takes up way too much screen space, even in minimap mode.
- near impossible to reach max level 99. gaining character levels in d2 is slow, especially past lvl 60. it takes a really long time. and when you go past 80 or 90, it could take weeks of play just to go up one level. at some point, it will simply not be worth the time and effort to reach the next level since the benefit to your character is so minuscule.
- character experience loss when you die. when your character dies on nightmare or hell difficulty, you lose xp. at lvl 70+ you could lose DAYS worth of playing progress. not cool
- no revive at body and body fetch when you die. so never mind that you just lost a ton of xp and gold when you died, now you also cannot revive at your current location, only in town and without any gear. nice so i have to do a naked run into the area where i just got killed by some badass monsters in order to retrieve my body/gear. there is a VERY good chance you will die again and lose more xp. good times.
- very small inventory and stash space. honestly, you dont really have much space to store anything. even the amount of gold you can stash is really limited.
- no auto gold pickup. click click click click...
- charms. they give you some nice stats and bonuses but they take up inventory space. nice, another way to fill up my already tiny inventory.
- no shared stash. that means there is no way for you to give your barbarian character this amazing legendary axe you just found with your necro. really lame. no i have no friends.
- no smart loot. all drops are seemingly random so if a legendary item magically happens to drop, chances are really high it will be something you cant even use for the character you are playing.
- potion management. ugh, i have to make sure i have enough potions and that they are properly organized in my belt. i really do not miss this. oh did i mention you can get poisoned unavoidably and usually if you dont have an antidote potion on hand in your tiny inventory, no amount of health potions can save you. oh and some monsters can freeze you in your tracks, leaving you to stand there helplessly while the eat your face while you are trying to find a thawing potion in your inventory.
- scrolls suck. in d2 you have to carry town portal and item identify scrolls with you all the time. they take up inventory space and you better remember to refill your tp scrolls otherwise you will have to take a long walk back to the waypoint or spend time finding one.
- random loot rewards. sometimes you get loot as a quest reward. these can be really powerful but since it is random, some players will hugely benefit from this but others will get trash. as an example, charsi will imbue an item for you with magic powers. lets say two equivalent characters both give her a circlet to imbue. one player could get a +2 to all skills version and another one +30 mana. that is a big difference and is unfair and pisses people off. d3 has random loot rewards too but will it never be anything significant.
- extremely low drop rates for high level loot. sure if you are really geared up, playing in a group and do baal runs or whatever over and over you can get nice loot. but for us plebs, trying to find something like a zod rune is simply impossible. nevermind all the hidden information about area levels and level requirements for certain loot to drop. you basically need to no-life d2 for months to find anything good, f*** that.
- stamina. runs out if you run too much, especially at low character levels. super annoying since it takes quite while to recover.
- permanent stat/skill points. ok apparently they have added a way to respec but i couldnt figure it out. but it pretty much still comes down to if you spent points on the many many useless skills or stats for your character, tough shit. you will probably be too weak to beat the higher difficulties and will have to make a new character from scratch.
- attack rating was bad. ar is a stat in d2 that determines what chance you have of hitting your intended target. do you have any idea how annoying and weird it is to dual wield axes with frenzy and have insane damage stats, but for some magical reason you are only able to land every 10th slash you do. or how about firing a wall of hundreds of arrows towards a whole group of monsters and only 3 of them actually hurts anything. wtf?
- curses. if you have ever tried to whirlwind your barbarian through a pack of knights and suddenly they cast an iron maiden curse on you, you will know the pain of curses. i hate them.
- resistance penalties for nightmare and hell difficulties. why is this needed? it can be quite hard to overcome the massive 100 resistance penalty on hell difficulty and the resistances even cap out.
- monster damage immunity. so pretty much every monster on hell difficulty is immune to at least one type of damage, often 2 or more. if you dont have a proper "backup" attack that uses a different damage type or the monster is immune to your primary and secondary attacks... then you are screwed, you cannot kill it. what makes things worse, this is true for (some) bosses as well!
- hireling cost too high and they die easy. hirelings are pretty much useless later in the game since they die too easily and cost a lot of gold to revive.
- game only runs in low resolution. you can only run the game in 640x480 or 800x600 resolution. this is really low and was very low even back when d2 was first released (only 640x480 back then). the game looks like crap. sure you get mods/hacks to increase it but there are drawbacks with these and they dont always work. higher resolutions are not officially supported.
- character movement in blocks. this is kinda hard to describe but it is very noticeable to me in d2. imagine that the world "floor" is made up of a big grid of blocks, like a chess board. when you click a point to move to, your character will only move in discrete directions in order to get there and he/she wont stop exactly where you clicked but rather on the center of the nearest block. this makes it feel like your character often does not move in the exact direction or stop in the correct position that you want them to.

there you have it. i could actually add more to this list but those would be even more subjective and i had technical difficulties getting the game to work properly which wont be everyone's experience. for example, every time i have tried to play the game online it lagged SUPER bad. but it could be just because i'm in south africa. however, d3 is absolutely fine online, even on crappy 3g. i'm not saying d3 is better in every way. they did f***up the story, the arts style is not great, it is online only, characters are less unique and pvp is limited.

what i am saying is that right now d3 is a much more enjoyable game with actual endgame content, a lot of quality of life upgrades and it feels much more rewarding to more casual players like me. i dont know what is going to happen with diablo 4 but i just hope the devs dont listen to these bitter old fans and make the game like d2. thing all fans should be wary of though are how they are planning to monetize this game. it is activision after all. looks like d4 might just be another game i will be skipping due to corporate greed.

am i getting too old for gaming?

recently i've been wondering if my non-excitement for gaming in general is because i'm just getting old. maybe i'm slowly outgrowing the desire to play video games. there have been some "exciting" games announced/released from franchises that i do love. modern warfare, diablo 4, baldur's gate 3, halo infinite, gears 5, borderlands 3 and others. in the past i would have been so hyped for these sequels but i didn't even buy mw or borderlands 3, i havent started to play gears 5 even though it has been out for a while and i'm not very excited for the other ones.

i was really thinking that i was just not going to be excited for any new game. it also extends to movies and tv series. they announced that robert patterson would be the new batman and for a moment i felt like raging about how horrible he would be as batman but then i realized that i just dont care anymore. after the 4th recast of batman in 20 years, i just couldnt be bothered since the new DC movies just suck anyway. well to be fair they dont completely suck, they are just the same thing over and over and over. thats why i didnt go and see the new joker movie. because i've seen the demented shocking joker in live action a couple of times. from jack nicholson in batman, heath ledger in dark night and many versions in animated movies and series. i just didnt feel like the new movie would really show me anything that i havent seen from joker before. xmen, where they have screwed up all the movies for years, why would dark phoenix be any different? the last 3 terminator movies have been terrible so i had no hope for dark fate. you can only be burned so many times before you lose faith in a brand all together.

it is also becoming more and more obvious which of these movies, games and series are made by people who truly have a unique vision or passion for them or whether they are made by the numbers purely to cash in on the name to make money. why would i even care about a batwoman show when it is clearly just made to pander to the woke crowd and a cash in on the current women superhero fad that is running now. people are catching on and audiences are shrinking.

time between sequels/iterations also creates different fanbases that want different things. that is what is happening to disney with star wars. there are the old old fans that only like the original trilogy and they see disney as "ruining everything star wars". you get the oldish fans who like the original and prequel trilogy and they see disney as just cashing in on what has already been done before, leaving the new movies rather hollow and meaningless. then you also get the new fans that have only watched the new movies. they like them but dont get the references and throwbacks to the old movies, even cringing to them and never really seeing the big picture. they also have no "band loyalty" so if the last one was bad, they wont even give the next one a chance. that is why it is impossible for disney to please everyone with the new star wars movies.

so my excitement for new series, movies and games have been low. was it because i was getting old? maybe but then to my surprise, this week i have been so intrigued by death stranding that i'm actually considering getting a ps4 just to play it! it looks like a unique experience that tells an interesting story. it is a completely new IP, something new and... exciting.

death stranding made be realize that if there is something new, interesting and unique enough presented to us, people will care and flock to it. even more surprising is that how bad, generic, over saturated and bland most other games, movies and series have gotten that we just dont care about them anymore. a light will stand out in a sea of mediocrity. whether the game is good, i dont know. but it has been a long time since i was so excited to find out.

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the future of gaming

i really dont like the look of how the gaming landscape is changing. well to be honest, we are already there. it is already concerning how everything is going digital only and the retail physical media is disappearing. sure digital purchases and downloads are very convenient but in a lot of cases, if that service/platform/company goes under then your game library is gone. you do get places like gog.com where you buy stand alone digital games where there is no such risk but with the majority are places like steam, playstation, xbox, battle.net etc you need your account to play and offline play is limited or even not possible. effectively, you dont own any digital media "purchased". you simply pay to get access to playing a particular game, listen to music and watch some tv shows.

there are other issues with digital only. big download sizes really hurts a lot of internet users. i know that most first world countries have uncapped high speed internet for cheap. but here in south africa, internet is expensive and most of these services have data caps. there more data you download, the more you pay. some services easily charge you around $10 per GB. and the nicer, faster internet with higher data caps are limited in availability. so having to download a 100GB game is, in many cases, not affordable in internet data costs. you also cant currently trade in digital games for store credit like you can with physical copies. you cant re-sell digital games. also, when these games are tied to an online account, you can easily lose access to playing the game if your account is banned or locked. in our current extreme politically correct culture, it can happen really easily. games also frequently disappear off digital stores, so if you dont have it downloaded already, you could lose your purchase.

it is about to get worse though. the new future of gaming are streaming services like google stadia. at first i thought this great, you sign up for a service like netflix for cheap and get access to lots of games and you can game on nearly any device! however, as more info emerged, i soon realized there are a few issues with google stadia:
- game purchases. you are still required to buy individual games at the same price as retail or other digital stores. this is not a cheaper alternative.
- data costs. the amount of data games streaming will use is huge, which as explained above, will be costly for users in south africa and many other countries.
- google frequently just abandons or cancels projects/services. image you buy thousands of dollars of games and google just decides, nah we are cancelling this service. all gone
- latency. google insists it wont be a problem but i'm sorry, there will be some latency when playing over the internet versus on local dedicated hardware. even if you remove video streaming out of the equation.
- permanently online requirement. to use this service, you'll need a very stable line. if your connection drops or google servers are under maintenance, you dont get to play.
- internet congestion. most of use live in a household or community with multiple internet users. because this game streaming service requires a stable & fast connection, you will have issues if your little sister is surfing on instagram or mom is checking something on netflix. sure it is not an exclusive from to game streaming but the difference is that now if mom wants to watch netflix, you play some offline single player games instead of team deathmatch. actually, most online games use little bandwidth so you could probably even play team deathmatch will mom is on netflix. but games streaming uses way more data and there is no offline single player to resort to, it is all online, all the time.
- service availability. because this service uses a lot of internet traffic and requires massive servers and infrastructure, it will take a while for this service to become available to places like africa and south america.
- game performance. here is something no one seems to be talking about. ok so a modern game uses quite a bit of resources to push out all the nice graphics and sound. google says that these games will run on powerful servers with limitless power. yeah, things dont really work that easily. it will still take a significant chunk of computing power and there will be thousands of users. i cant see how these servers can flawlessly run these high end game at 60fps, streaming it to users with no stuttering or frame drops. also, how often will these servers be upgrade or new ones added to keep up with gaming technology? and if you tell a game developer they get limitless power to run their game, they will likely not optimize their game properly resulting in an endless cycle. that is what happens with PC gaming, you need to upgrade as time goes on. but now it is out of your control and up to google.
- the games. from the look of things, these are PC games running on the servers with controller support. that means that console exclusives will likely never come to google stadia. another problem with this is that developers will prioritize the PC development and support for steam. stadia compatibility will be further down the list. it's the same reason why nintendo doesn't get much 3rd party support. developers and publishers just rather focus on the xbox and playstation versions since that is where they will make more money.

lots of questions and issues at this point. one thing that really makes me wonder is why wouldn't they just do a simple netflix subscription type service? surely it would be more profitable. from their perspective, they get a constant stream of money through subscriptions and there are many advantages to this model since you can sell x amount of time on special where people feel compelled to use the service they paid for, people are lazy to cancel month-to-month subscriptions etc. you can then also easily plan and use this stream of money to make the service better and maintain it. that is why subscription based xbox live was so successful during the xbox 360 / ps3 era and the free playstation networked suffered. now google seems to just rely on game and chromecast sales? doesn't make sense does it? you know why? what is google primary business? advertising. yip, google stadia is just another way to push ads. that is why they have a "free" model, they can push as many ads as they like and will still expect you to buy the games at full price.

from a consumer perspective, a netflix type subscription service would be much better i believe. if you get access to a bunch of games for a mere $10 a month, the non-ownership problem is easily ignored. if a game disappears it sucks but you don't feel like your property is taken away. at that price you can use it as a secondary gaming platform. so you have a playstation, xbox or nintendo for console exclusives and stadia for the other games and you can use your crummy laptop to play them on. but if the internet goes down or data cap is reached, you jump back onto your console.

project xcloud from microsoft is similar to google stadia and certainly has most of the same problems. you are limited to xbox games too it seems but for that reason performance, scalability and game compatibility is much less of a concern. also a lot of people already have a lot of games in their xbox game library. with the xbox game pass model, you then actually have a netflix type subscription. probably. there arent that many details available right now, so i guess we'll see.

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entertainment depression of 2019

i've been going through a bit of a difficult time in my personal life. i wont get into it too much but i will say that i have been rather "sad" for most of the last year and i went through a traumatic situation last month. i'm ok but it certainly hasnt helped my state of mind. what helps me through periods like this (like with most people) is to dive into escapism through video games, tv shows, movies and books.

but this year it just seems like there isnt much in the entertainment industry that i'm enjoying or looking forward too. it could be my state of mind but it is definitely not just that. it's all just reboots, sequels, low effort knockoffs or dark broody constructs. look at games this year... modern warfare is like a reboot of a remaster of a modernized version of a copycat world war 2 game. borderlands 3 is just more borderlands 2 but with dickhead developers and publishers and tons of microtransactions. wolfenstein youngblood looked so promising but released as a broken rpg looter shooter without the loot and with a cringey story.

avengers game... cash in on movie popularity. halo infinite... sequel. gears 5... sequel. and so it goes on with final fantasy, tom clancy games 368 and 369, zelda, watch dogs, dying light 2, need for speed etc. and i hate to break it to you but cyberpunk 2077 is simply a reskinned witcher 3. hell we even get wow classic... a re-release of a game that is 15 years old that you still have to pay a subscription for. then there are the indie devs. most of which are these edgy emo atmospheric "experiences" that only last for 2 hours and they all have to have some deeper meaning or shitty pixelated "retro" graphics.

so what games did i enjoy so far this past year? i liked spyro reignited trilogy. yes it is a "remaster" but i had never played the original. i played overcooked which was quite a lot of simple co-op fun. black ops 4 was fun in bursts but that is only because battlefied 5 was a disaster and there is nothing else to scratch that particular multiplayer itch. and no, battle royale games are a joke to me. at the moment i am playing a game that i've never heard of before and i'm actually really enjoying. what is it? earth defense force. a xbox 360 game from 2006 that i got through games with xbox gold. a simple 3rd person shooter where you shoot giant bugs and robots while collecting weapon and health upgrades. thats it. simple shooting fun. besides those the only other games i played were old favorites that i replayed like army of two, stuntman ignition and advanced warfare.

on the movie front, the last (and only) movie i watched this year was avengers endgame. and even that was disappointing. nothing else seemed worth the time. again, all the big non-pretentious movies are sequels and reboots. spiderman, glass, lion king, aladin, lego movie 2, pet sematary, hellboy, john wick 3, godzilla, dark phoenix, men in black, shaft, child's play, toy story 4, fast & furious, it 2 etc. all movies we've seen over and over again.

same thing with series, just new seasons for shows we've had for ages. or more and more superhero shows with the same stories we've had for decades. nothing fun and light and original. the movies and series that are "new" and somewhat original are these fking obscure and depressing pitfalls like Kidding.

even if we do get some light hearted family friendly shows and movies, they have become so infested with this sjw, diversity, global warming, orange man bad rhetoric and i'm sick of seeing it. not saying i'm against it, just really really tired of it coming up over and over and over again in everything. it is the same reason why a lot of these kid shows are so intolerable because all of them, each episode has these life lessons in it like you have to share with friends, not cry wolf, not bully other kids, appreciate your family etc. these messages are good but the same shit over and over again, being treated like an idiot or a bad person all the time.

twitch.tv seems to support animal abuse now so i dont want to be on there anymore. even on youtube, it's all just controversies, drama and politics. a lot of the content creators i used to watch are just sad now or dont have much to base content off of and have resorted to minecraft let's plays or reaction videos.

social media and outrage culture has taken over everything and i'm getting old

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e3 and upcoming games

e3 is over and we saw a lot of stuff. thought i'd do a quick rundown of my thoughts on some of the more popular games & systems. here we go

ps5 & xbox scarlet - too early to say really, i dont think we need new console by next year already but hey we'll see. will probably get the new xbox sometime, i doubt i will get the ps5.
final fantasy - i could really not care less. let me save some space here and time for you, anything anime-like i do not like and i'm not interested. all the guys look like girls, the stories make no sense and the animation is terrible. i also do not like jrpgs.
nintendo everything - similar to the above, i don't really care about anything from nintendo. i think mario, donkey kong, pokemon and the other usual nintendo mascots are all childish. i also don't get the hype for the zelda games. they are okay, nothing more.
avengers game - wow, i was looking forward to this reveal. and it looks... horrible. they didn't really show gameplay but the cinematics looks like the came from the early 2000s and it turns out to be a live service game... booo. no thank you
minecraft dungeons - really? dungeon crawler minecraft game. if it is free i'll give it a go, otherwise pass.
jedi fallen order - this looks surprisingly bad actually. i'm not a big star wars fan but some of the games like force unleashed 2 were fun. this looks boring and they used the most beta male actor they could find. buy hey, could still turn out to be good
cyberpunk 2077 - i'm conflicted about this game. it does look pretty amazing but i doubt it would be my kind of game. too much talking and rpg-ing, not enough action. and they got the john wick guy in it, he was big in the 90s but pretty sad now.
halo infinite - not a huge halo fan but it is usually good mindless co-op action. think i might get this if it comes out on the xbox one and not scarlet exclusively. still waiting for a gameplay reveal though.
outer worlds - looks great, but will it also be too much rpg-ing and not enough gameplay? will wait for reviews.
gears 5 - looks good, i liked the last gears game.
12 minutes - this look very interesting!
doom eternity - games like this with satanic symbols and themes go against my religious beliefs. so i dont play them.
wolfenstein young blood - wolfenstein games are usually long winded and booooooring overall, but this one with its 80s twist looks pretty sweet!
dying light 2 - nah, i'm not too keen on zombie games right now.
borderlands 3 - you know what, it doesnt even matter what i think of this game. i will be boycotting this one and so should you. in my opinion, randy pitchford is a sexual predator, a creep, an insecure asshole that needs to be taught a lesson. all his controversies and the fact that they went epic store exclusive on pc means i want nothing to do with this game.
watch dogs legion - this game is going to suck, mark my words. the watch dogs games have not been anything special and now you can play as any npc? this gimmick is going to cost the game its identity and it will end up being a generic and silly sandbox game.
tom clancy games 458, 459 ...? - seriously, the whole ubi conference was just f*cking tom clancy games. i thought they were trolling me. tom clancy games arent bad but nothing really stood out to me. why not a new warfighter game or something?
blair witch - looks pretty scary and i like horror games, will wait for gameplay to decide.

overall, e3 was kinda disappointing. no driving games except forza (ugh), not enough 3rd person action games and nothing from blizzard or dice. look i know i'm being very negative and all but that is just how i'm feeling about the state of gaming these days. i want classic first person shooters, good arcade racers, action rpgs and 3rd person adventure games. not really getting much of those and when we do get them they are disappointing sequels and/or riddled with microtransactions. everything else is battle royale, mobile or live service.
one last thing, that nintendo switch finger click advertising is driving me mad, so annoying!

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cod mw announcement

that was both expected and unexpected. but honestly, i dont know if i even care enough. you might be wondering, how can anyone complain about this game based on what has been announced? modern warfare reboot, new engine, crossplay, no season pass, cross game mode progression, co-op/spec ops and classic characters. lets discuss these individually.

apparently this new cod is a reboot of the modern warfare series. that kind of pisses me off actually. why not modern warfare 4? they basically just throw away the old story. doesnt matter that soap died and washington was destroyed. no screw that, we are too lazy to write a proper sequel with new interesting characters and locations linking up with the games of the past, we'll just start from scratch. lazy af.

a new engine huh? yeah right, they have said before. other cod games had "a new engine". bullshit, they update just enough graphics tech to make it look a bit more modern but everything else stays the same. these days, it is impossible to create a new game engine and develop a AAA game in 2-3 years. no way

crossplay... oh crossplay. why is this something that people want? i get it would help to increase the playerbase with regards to matchmaking. however, pc and console players should not be playing against each other. pc players would destroy us console plebs. also, on pc you get A LOT more people using hacks and exploits since it is much easier to deploy. plus, developers cant exactly ban a PC like they can ban consoles.

next we get to the stuff i'm really worried about, the monetization of the game. they say there is no "season pass", but i'm certain they will do some sort of pass. they simply change the name and make it work slightly differently, similar to what they did with the dreaded black ops pass. they also said that you share progression across all game modes. so you level up a weapon in multiplayer and then carry on with it in single player or something. you know why they are doing this? no not to make players happy, it is a way that they can monetize single player. "buy this supply drop to get this super weapon early on for the game, or it could give you this suit that makes your footsteps silent so you can creep up on those taliban soldiers in campaign easily." you laugh... but can you really put it past them seeing what they are doing to blops iiii?

co-op/spec ops could be good but if it is like spec ops from mw2, then it will really not be for me. oh and no zombies mode this year, that sucks. and you can bet that a lot of other mw series characters will return as these new "operators". there will probably be similar systems to rainbow 6 siege with the packs and all. tugging at our nostalgia heart strings and expecting us to fork up money AGAIN to play as cpt price. f*ck that

nothing ever changes when it comes to call of duty. i promise you there will be at least 1 time before launch where fans will be outraged because of something. and at least 2 times after launch. activision is always like "hey you asked for pizza, and here it is!!!!!! oh, and not that it matters but it is a frozen veggie pizza and i used your credit card to buy it. anyway, enjoy!"

personally i have just been burned too many times by activision. for the first time since blops 2, i have no intention to buy the next cod game. you know what is funny though... i'm actually enjoying blops iiii multiplayer right now. not too sure why. maybe it is because it has been out for a while, i've gotten used to the annoying things in the game. it is kinda irrelevant now with the new cod announced and people (including myself) dont seem to care about their stats, their new weapon unlocks and ive embraced the specialists by trolling people. i like robbing players of their hard earned streaks with zero, camping with torque's barrier and blinding folks with ajax. sure, i still cant stand the micortransactions in that game, i think they are absolutely disgusting. and they dont make it easy to ignore i tell you that. but if you no longer care about earning or unlocking anything, then it is just like an ad on youtube. i really wish i could find game of prop hunt though.

in short, f*ck cod 2019. maybe i'll go play battalion 1944 when it launches on consoles.

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gaming update

it's been a while since my last post. so what have i been up to? what do i think of the latest trending gaming stories? well, not much really...

i haven't been able to play a whole lot of games recently, real life and all that. i'm also in a bit of a gaming lull of sorts. kinda bored with most games and demotivated in general.

as for blops iiii, i have not touched it in over a month. there isn't really anything new there to do, game modes are boring & i completely despise the micro-transaction and season pass system. i've read they have even added supply drops into the game. it is so despicable and disgusting. i was thinking of playing the game again when this new "big" update but when i heard they added supply drops again i decided to rather just stay away. i might return to the game much later during the year when things settle down, the focus shifts to the next cod and the micro-transactions aren't being crammed down my throat at every turn.

i'm actually at the point where i do not even want to buy or play any game the has micro-transactions of any kind. i think they detract from the games they are in, are designed to tug on the heart strings of customers using nostalgia, plays on peer pressure from friends and/or gaming groups and promotes gambling and pay-to-win amongst children and young adults. in the past i was okay with cosmetics only micro-transactions but even there is a line that should not be crossed and i hate the fact the developers deliberately lock certain game cosmetics behind a paywall where it should have been part of the full priced game.

there also has not been any new games that i'm interested in. lets go through a few recent "big" games and my thoughts on them:

* kingdom hearts 3: this looks cool with all the disney/pixar characters and locations but then i found out it is a jrpg... i hate jrpgs.

* fallout 76: well no, an online only fallout game with no npc's, loads of bugs and pay-to-win micro-transactions. hell no.

* resident evil 2: there is one stupid thing i hate in resident evil games and as silly as it sounds, it ruins the whole experience for me. limited ammo. you get so little ammo and you have to scavenge so carefully just to have a shot at surviving. the controls are also always outdated when it comes to shooters. so nah.

* anthem: i am definitely in the minority but i do not like bioware games. not mass effect, kotor or dragon age. to me they are boring, generic and lacks proper actual gameplay. with anthem it seems they didn't know what they were doing. they seem to get the gameplay right this time. but now the story, content, atmosphere and technical systems suffer. oh and it has stupid micro-transactions.

* far cry new dawn: same map as far cry 5 with a splash of candy pink, rpg elemets and some mundane sister villains. pass.

* metro exodus: this doesn't look too bad but the developers screwed over their fans on steam so not too sure if i want to support them.

* crackdown 3: i can't stomach terry crews so that is a hard no for me.

* apex legends: not a fan of battle royale and i'm too pissed at respawn for making this game instead of titanfall 3.

i guess the other issue i'm having with regards to games is that there isn't really anything on the horizon that i'm looking forward to at the moment. i'm not into tom clancy shooters so division 2 is not for me, same with fighting games and mk11, rage 2 has potential but is probably going to end up being a first person just cause seeing as it is the same developer, doom eternal looks exactly the same as the previous one and gears 5 is still far away. as for the rumored cod mw 4... honestly, blops iiii is really pressing my buttons with it's abundance of micro-transactions so i think i will need to make a "vote with your wallet" stand and not buy the next call of duty.

not all is lost though, i still have loads of older games in my backlog to play. i'm aiming to do some short reviews for these over time because why not.

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