End of joystiq and what has happened to gametrailers ???

So news came out that the site joystiq.com was coming to a end next tuesday.

It was one of my go to sites for news and felt more independant then the bigger sites and it is a real shame it is closing.


Really you need those type of sites such them destructoid and kotaku as they would often cover the stuff that some big sites would ignore.

Also you feel if there more independant they have a bit more creative control and would not bow down to pressure from publishers. I really hope the people from joystiq get together and create another site.

Now gametrailers used to be one of my fav sites with invisible walls and personalities. Shane satterfield left and it was still pretty good but then news came gametrailers got bought and then it went downhill very fast. First there was a lot of layoffs which was stupid as they were the faces of gametrailers such as Rohan Rivas and Daniel Kayser, ryan stevens, Then the shows took a bit of a dive with iw stopping and the replacement for that show not lasting long

I really think they need to up the quality soon and the speed of stuff as guilty gear xrd was only reviewed the past few days despite being out for ages
 

Wrestling and wwe etc

I know this is a bit random compared to what i normally talk about but anyway.

Many years ago late 80s and early 90s i was a massive wrestling fan hulk hogan/andre the giant/legion of doom/tug boat/ultimate warrior etc were all massive larger then life personalities. And of course back then i was under the illusion that it was all real and kayfabe was well in force back then(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe).

But after a while when i got older i got bored of it the superstars i really liked all left or were past there best days and if i am honest the talent roster i felt got more grounded in reality rather then the larger then life personality though i still may catch the odd show every now and then.

Now the reason i am doing this blog now is i have watched the past 2 royal rumbles and it does seem like the fans are getting a lot more in the know and not reacting how i imagine WWE would want them to react.

Now i can see WWE could be in a bit of pickle if they bow down to the fans then it is the fans running the show or if WWE do there own thing i can imagine fans leaving so really from there point of view it is what makes financial sense .


WWE is a planned written show but with real people and i think they have to really be there for the fans. I was trying to think of TV shows that did there own thing but fan outrage caused them to back pedal and i cannot think of many. Imagine if game of thrones killed of a fan fav character would the viewership plummet ? i doubt it but if something happened in a tv show and the audience abandoned the show they would have to address it the most famous one  i can think of was dallas and the whole bobby thing where they literally had to scrap a season and restart.

In the end what with UFC it is getting harder for the  WWE to really stay on top and they need to be a lot more flexible.

One thing i will say now is while i do not really follow wrestling one of the big things i am a fan of is the shoot interviews there are so many entertaining ones out there so if anyone wants to see a top 10 list let me know

Lost ark (PC GAME) diablo 3 with a bit of bayonetta ...shut up and take my money

Vary rarely a trailer will come that impresses me a lot but the trailer for the upcoming rpg lost ark really was my type of thing.

Firstly it is long nearly 20 min but they go really in depth and when i saw the combat i said that is what i want.Here is the trailer

Now my only concern is its being made in korea where Free to play and mmos are huge so i really hope they make it more like diablo rather then a Mmo or free to play. And of course it may have alot of grinding but if the combat is as fun it would not bother me

Though from what i have heard may be a while till release perhaps next year though hoping they do a beta

No time to review games

So was checking out the destructoid website and they say they as well as them many other reviewers have only got there dying light game code today....and the game comes out tommorow. Now that rings alarm bells as you get they impression that they do not have much confidence in there game.

Though it would have been a lot worse if they sent out review copies tomorrow or even never that is the worse sign

Rose tinted glasses time .I remember the time where i would get a magazine and they would have a review for a game released in a few weeks and sometimes a month or two in advance.

Now if we are lucky we may get a review a few days in advance.

But for me when the reviews are up or embargos are lifted that usually is a sign on the quality of the game  

90s arcade racer kickstarter project

So some gameplay footage dropped for this game i have to say it looks decent with a lot of nods to classic games. I really like driving but many games feel a bit soulless and back grounds are static but so far it looks packed with stuff to keep a eye out for.


I really hope there are plenty of stages packed with things ( really hoping for short cuts but not sure that will be what they will do)

It will be interesting to see what they do with the meat of the game though i really hope they start doing updates as they seem to be a bit sporadic

Arcades and the changes i have noticed

So last summer i went back to england to visit near where i used to live. Decided to check the places like great yarmouth and cromer arcades from my youth.

They are still there but not what they used to be. For starters there was hardly any actual arcade games at all was all just gambiling/penny drop/fruit machins/video poker. I only came across two or three proper arcade machines.

But i think the thing that really surprised me was how busy all the arcades were they were packed with all age groups which when i used to go there in the days of killer instinct and streetfighter alpha 2 they were never that busy.

I think arcades could work now but would have to have a major overhaul. My dream arcade would be like what there is in america where you pay $10 upfront and can play as many games as you like but also there are not just arcade games but consoles like the xbox one and ps4.I would also have included a cafe and a games shop to


If i had a few million that would be my first project

Kickstarter Indiegogo and other crowdfunding ....now the reputations of the developers making the games will mean everything

Kickstarter has been going on for a long time and we have had a lot of developers using it and past few years seeing the fruits of there work and those games will really help sell there next crowd funding idea.

Recently we had on Kickstarter Shadowrun: Hong kong and it met its goals very quickly. Probably due to the good reception for there previous shadow run game.

But then we have the opposite end for human resources mentioned in a previous blog but there dealing with that game in my eyes has put a real dent in future crowd funding and they really need to make good on there previous game .

I can say if you come up with the goods the next time you want to make a game chances are you will fund it. The makers of shovel knight if they do another game i am willing to bet the funding will be a lot higher due to universal praise for the game.

Now though you have youtubers and websites like http://cliqist.com/ that can point out any potential issues or pitfalls so while it is not risk free it does allow you to get more information about projects and what they have done before

Games that are good but just limited either by time ambition or budget

I was a big fan of puzzle quest 1 and 2 a puzzle game mixed with pretty good rpg mechanics took the whole match 3 puzzle genre to a new level for me .

So low and behold they announced marvel puzzle quest i thought great then i played the game....and while it is fun it is just a puzzle game (with questionable paying for gold and gems mechanics) i felt it was really limited by a lack of ambition even for a mobile free to play game no quest of rpg mechanics at all.

Now the game lethal league now this is a really fun game but i still get this nagging feeling that i am playing a flash game.

I also get that feeling with a lot of PC ports such as dark souls and until recently resident evil 4 they were really quick cash grab ports

Fable was a series that was promised a lot of things but in the end was nowhere near what was promised and again was still fun but i felt could have been a lot more ambitious.

How many usernames and passwords do you have....and what are they worth ?

About 8 ago i had a steam account never really used it was just there for some disc games that required it i hated it at the time mostly because i did not have broadband.

Well cut to a couple of years ago i got broadband so i thought i would try steam again.Well after so long i had to reset my password but was a email that was compromised so had a new one...to cut to the chase i could not reset my password i had to create a new account.

But it got me thinking though there was only a few games registered to that account but what if i had a lot of games there.

Same with things like Psn or xbox live do much is tied down to you being able to log in. Thankfully you can have back up or secondary emails just in case.  

But my worry is always what would happen if for whatever reasons my accounts got hacked could i access the games i paid for

Also you have things that can be done online taxes/banking/credit cards it just is pretty scary how much reliance we have on being online

Procedural or manual design in games

Often with games like diablo series or upcoming games like no mans sky you will see something called procedural generation for levels. And what that means is using algorithms the computer can generate the content without someone having to design them.

Where it can work really well is for things such as forests where you can program how forests form and how leaves and branches form and then the system can generate a realistic forest. Same could apply for space sims for star systems and even planets.

Often games would use it for levels. Diablo series is one of the bigger examples with areas having different layouts.

Now for the level design people would say it encourages replayability which to a certain extent is true. My problem with that though is you miss things that if was manually designed would have such as memorable level layouts or landmark places and often you would see a lot of the same features which are recycled.

Upcoming no mans sky is supposed to use procedural which i can understand due to the scale but i really hope it would not get repetitive.

I would say use a combination of both use the procedural but also put some design into levels  features to break up the reusing of assets.

Beasts fury updated demo

A new demo dropped thought i would give a few opinions.

first thing is control issues are still there thought have been told there is a work around but have to use the joy 2 key program. When i did get the controller to work would get the odd weird thing happen like special moves not working.

Would also get some really severe frame rate issues where during some moves and game play would go from 144fps down to 6fps.

Still apart from those issues i think when it runs well it feels a lot better then the previous demo moves flow better and it is a lot more fun and also if you press H activates infinite health and timer so good for training and testing

Opinions on the 3 big consoles

Firstly the xbox one

First thing i will say is it not a fan of the look of the system it is just a black box reminds me of a VCR. The controller i quite liked i thought it would be really hard for a fighting game like killer instinct but i got used to it.

Setting it up was simple put in my wep key set up account logged in and i was sorted. I really hate the User interface though too similar to xbox 360 which i also did not like it could be so much simpler and uncluttered and while it may be designed for kinect (which i did not get) they should have done a version for controllers. Still downloading stuff is much easier and also you can start playing a game before it  has finished downloading providing enough has downloaded.

The 500gb harddrive it comes with i doubt would be enough as out of the box you only have about 370gb available. Thankfully you can use a external usb harddrive.

Second the ps4

So the look of the console is a lot better then the xbox one and it is much smaller the user interface is a bit like the ps3 but i think it could be a lot better.

Again like with the xbox one it was very straightforward to set up online

The controller i really liked it feels so comfortable in the hand though the touch pad/button is a bit to close to the d-pad i have accidentally tapped it a few times.Like with the xbox one it has a 500gb hardrive though you can buy a internal 2.5" hardrive and replace it easily (it is possible with the xbox one but it is not easy)

Thirdly the Wii-u

This is the smallest console reminds me of a more rounded wii of course you have the tablet style controller which i actually found comfortable though not really as practical for games like bayonetta 2. The UI is a lot more straightforward then the other consoles but having the second screen touch pad is very handy.

Setting up online was easy enough aswell though had a few issues registering for club nintendo

Now as far as storage goes with the system you can get 8gb or 32gb which if you are planning to go digital it is not enough but you can use Sd cards or external hardrives. However i found with the wii u if you going for physical media you do not have the insane updates that the other consoles have.


That is my initial summary however here is where i go on a bit of a rant. You buy consoles for games and to be honest exclusive wise they are a bit lacking while i would say the wii-u had the edge it had been out for longer but even then with the wii u i was expecting a lot more.With the xbox one and ps4 it does feel like a drought for exclusive games and i really hope more comes out soon.    

My gaming irks list

Thought it would be fun to put a list up of things in games that i hate and feel should not be there.

It is in no particular order

1.Unskippable cutscenes they can get very annoying if you are on a second playthrough or if the games checkpoint save is right before one.

2.Overlong boring tutorials. I know with some games that you need to learn to play especially RTS games but often i see them stretched (perhaps for story purposes ) i really feel they can be a lot more efficient and faster.

3.Online drm. Think i have mentioned this enough previously

4.Day one dlc/preorder bonuses. Ok here is a example i could not afford a xbox one but recently i could so i bought it and the game i really wanted killer instinct but i wanted shadow jago. Guess what he was a bonus if you bought a day one member ship card.

5.Winning the battle but actually losing in the following cut scenes. Happens in a few FPS games but have noticed  does happen in blazblue a lot.

6. Escort missions with some games it is hard enough to keep yourself alive but to look after someone else....especially if they have poor AI.

7.Rubber band AI (mentioned in a previous blog)

8. Season passes. Now when you buy a full game you sort of know what you are going to get but a season pass that is another matter they are almost the price of a full game. But you do not know what you will get they could be a whole massive campaign or perhaps just a tiny little multiplayer map.

9.Instafail. Have been a few games where in stealth sections if you get spotted you have to start all over again and i really hate them

10.BUGS i think i can safely say this and previous gen had the most buggy games i have ever played even with day one patches some games were unplayable at launch .

Upgraded from a 270X AMD card to a 970 NVIDIA card with benchmarks

Have upgraded recently and will do more posts and some more videos later on but for this blog and video are some benchmark comparisons for the 2 cards .

Now i am not a hardware reviewer so do not have access to tons of hardware and the benchmarks are not done with a  razor sharp precision but they should at least give a rough idea of the difference.

At the moment i am using a amd 8350 processor stock speeds 10gb of ram and windows 8


                                                 270x                                                   970
                                     Min      Max     Avg (FPS)              Min      Max     Avg

Bioshock infinite          10.41                51.8                        9.02                   82.03

Ultra streetfighter 4                               154                                                  297

Hard reset                     29.8      94.7     57.5                        30.4      159.1    70.5

Tomb raider                  32         58.4     44.8                        68         108        90

Just cause 2 (Tower)                              86.17                                              109

Thief                             0.3        35.1     19.5                        20.7       74.6     41.2

Batman arkham city      48         72         68                           19          165      100

Metro 2033(not redux)   9.09     101.61      29                         9.37      221.34    69.33

So from that it does run faster and i thought was worth a upgrade and  had no issues. Now the next pc hardware i will do is replacing my amd 8350 with a new z97 motherboard and a 4690k intel processor and i plan to run the benchmarks again using the 970 graphics cards to see if there is much of a difference

Posted a video here for this blog

Are the next gen consoles underpowered and does it matter ?

To answer the first part yes they are compared to PC and compared to how the last gen came in. When i got my xbox 360 and ps3 it was the first of the HD gen and i never felt they were under powered at all the first batch of games like oblivion looked close enough to the pc versions it did not matter. This gen you have games that already feel held back especially if you value 60fps gameplay. And if 4k becomes huge they will not have the horsepower needed (in fact most modest Pc's could not handle 4k).

But does it really matter ? it should not but it depends on what games come out if you make a game exclusive to a console and there are no comparison you can make them far better then previous gen just look at the system exclusives such as killer instinct and infamous second son. With a decent aesthetic games will look good. Take the Wii u for example  even though hardware wise it is not far above previous gen games like bayonetta 2 and mario kart 8 still look amazing.

Of course while graphics should not matter i find if a game has good gameplay the graphics can enhance it. This gen really needs to last a while so i am hoping they can get over any limitations  

Was Halo the master chief collection the biggest launch disaster ?

Was watching the total biscuit video of the games awards and i was thinking was halo the biggest launch disaster ?. In my mind not a chance but that is purely i am not a multiplayer person. At launch the single player aspect was fine no issues at all and the fact is everyone can play single player.

But there were games on the list such as assassins creed unity where the single player aspect was broken

In the end though it is a personal preference i can appreciate that there are people who will prioritize multiplayer but for me with most games that have a single player aspect that needs to be got right first

Beasts fury indigogo and kickstarted game

I had been following the game beasts fury for a while saw the indie gogo campaign and then the kick starter campaign after  (should point out the reason for the second campaign was to improve the quality) and now the demo dropped.

It is really early but is playable. Issue i had at the start with my xbox 360 fight pad was when i pressed down it registered in game as up and vice a versa not sure why.I then  used the ps3 pad with a program called DS3 and it seemed to work ok but when i was in game and used keyboard to have a quick control of player 2 then went back to player 1 on joypad the same issue cropped up so i suspect may need to do some changes to configure controls.

With having a quick play you have your special moves super moves and chain combos. It is fun my feedback would be have more a feeling of impact as does not often feel like your blows make contact would love more activity in the background as well also sometimes i get a type of lag with some moves that could just be a issue with my computer though.

I probably have more to learn in the game though and it is a pre alpha build and is looking promising i hope in the next version they add practice mode so i can mess around with the character

There is due another demo next week so will be interesting to see what will have changed