In all seriousness, in a post FemFreq world, a world of Zoe Quinn and GamerGate, a world where where Carolyn Petit no longer has a job, how is it possible that this game is reviewed an there is zero mention of it's portrayal of women? I love you Mark! I usually enjoy your work and this is no exception, and perhaps you're just not willing to stand before the firing squad ... so I will.
This game is sexist, horribly and undeniably so, and that should matter in a review. Fire away.
Damnit Kojima! I really think it used to be about story and game design with you but now, every time you trot out Quiet to demo MGSV (which is like 90% of all demos) you are making it clear that it's just about marketing. You yourself admitted that she's in there because you wanted more sex appeal and cosplay in your game. Your selling us sex plain and simple. Your employing the straight male gaze to manipulate your customers.
Sure it's the status quo, but you used to be above the status quo and so where your games.
I loved your review Tom, but why is it an 8.0 and not higher? You don't list any cons and I didn't pick up on any in the video review. Is this in the writeup? (sorry, TLDR).
What if it isn't about money? Remember where Oculus came from. They asked the community to fund them and the community gave them a tremendous amount of support through Kickstarter. There is nothing more important to that community than transparency and honesty. Keeping your process and technologies open and accessible is what they crave. This has been born out time and time again and just like Nintendo did with the Wii, Oculus has just alienated their support base in a massive way. Notch is a clear example of this, as are all the angry comments flooding into the kickstarter page.
What Oculus represented over Sony and Google and Valve and their VR offerings is now gone. Our choice as consumers was just reduced and this is what Notch and all the other original backers are responding to. Kickstarter supporters are not a community of capitalists. They are not there to raise up the next generation of mega corporation and help build closed, money hungry, publicly traded ventures filled with corrupt executives. Even if the company, Kickstarter, does do this or intend for it to happen, the community of people that use it do not! Kickstarter just lost a lot of support today too.
Perhaps the one saving grace we have is John Carmack. He's done this before. Id is now part of Bethesda and I imagine most people that remember the old id and the habit of supporting platforms like Linux and releasing source code to older games are not happy with that relationship either. While things did change once Bethesda was involved by and large id still does what it always did. We lost a little of what we had in that company but it was likely necessary for them to survive in a playground that included Valve and other heavy hitter development companies. Now he's done it again. We seem the pulled into the fold of a big capitalistic company. I can only hope he works his magic to keep it aligned with what they stood for back when they kickstarted this idea. I will hope, but I won't assume.
I thought Vella from Broken Age had real potential and they were going for a Miyazaki type of heroine (they are some tough and complex ladies for you) but unfortunately I don't think Vella's tough side comes through at all the way the voice acting turned out.
"... perhaps they should stop taking so many crazy, creative risks in their hardware and do more of it in their software"
Bingo. I think this is the most reasonable advice I've ever heard anyone suggest to Nintendo. Hell, I've been feeling (and occasionally saying) just this for years!
This problem of lack of innovation in their first party IPs and games has been felt way back in the glory days of the Wii (at least for us long time Nintendo gamers). They got lucky with the Wii and their hardware risks paid off and led to some marvelous gameplay innovations. The undeniable reality is that this HASN'T and WON'T happen on the Wii U. Can Nintendo find the magic without a quirky new hardware innovation to fuel it? I don't know. Their track record for that is neither positive or negative. It will take a long time to get our answer and there will be no shortage of speculation along the way. It will only end when they either snap this lack of Wii U sales or bring us the next console very early into this generation.
All gamers will hold their breath secretly praying for Nintendo's success (even while they slam them out of the corners of their mouths). We all love games, we all love dedicated game consoles and platforms. The console world will suffer greatly without the presence of big N. Microsoft and Sony have both said this, clearly and distinctly. They want Nintendo to succeed so that the throw away experiences of Facebook and iPhone games are kept a safe distance from the real gaming experience. If Nintendo falls, that gap closes and we all will suffer for it, Nintendo fan boys and haters alike!
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