Before I start this blog post, I'd like to give a special thanks to all the people who posted on my last blog, but most especially to @RSM-HQ, who offered very reasoned points, reinforced by observations on the industry at large. Not only that, but for looking past the tribal gloating from the System Wars crowd. You did a lot to quiet the doubt in me, RSM, and the perspective is one I appreciate.

With that, on to the main show.

Controllers. Most of us have our favorites, from the beginning to today, and even on one system, you can find all sorts of controllers for every need.

Well, on Xbox and Switch you can, anyway.

It was something that struck me while I was getting my PS5 today - There's very little in the way of options for controllers for the PS5. The DualSense is crammed to the gills with gimmicks, but is also an ergonomic nightmare, with these sharp edges on the grips that are a lot less comfortable than controllers I've played with in the past, even as recently as the DualShock 4 and the Xbox One/X controller. How that ergonomic nightmare was missed, I'll never know, but that wouldn't be so bad if you had more options.

Unfortunately, the only other controllers that are available are even more expensive, and more crammed with gimmicks than the DualSense. The DualSense Edge, the Victrix Pro, and the Wolverine V2 are the only ones I've been able to find, and they're hellishly overpriced. Indeed, there seems to be no no-frills, gimmickless controller out there one can get to use on the vast majority of games that don't require Sony's motion or haptic triggers... Assuming ANY game really requires the latter as anything but a difficulty booster.

Contrast that with the Switch and the Xbox Series X. The former has a wealth of controllers of many shapes, sizes and themes, and that's just the officially licensed ones. On Series X, not only can you just use the Xbox One controllers, there are pads for every price range, and they've even gone so far as to enter a partnership with 8bitdo, the absolute GOATs when it comes to 3rd party controllers. Yes, 3rd party pads on Microsoft's system need to be wired, but it's a small price to pay for quality kit. Meanwhile, on the PS5... Crickets.

This isn't limited to the PS5, either. The PS4 also had a shortage of simple controllers, unless you wanted to use the Horii mini pad or import the Horii FPS pad (a controller styled like the Xbox One controller). But hell, at least Horii was there to fill the gap. However, the drought of mass-market-minded controllers for the PS5 is much more noticeable because of the sheer amount of money being asked. I don't know what Sony's problem is, but not everyone wants to spend $70 on extra pads, be it for a Player 2 or just something that feels a bit more simple and more ergonomic. It's not going to be very long before Brook figures out how to make their accessories work on PS5 games. They're already working on it with PS5-only fighting games. Is that going to be the only option for the PS5? Why is it taking THIS long for more mainstream alternative controllers to be released on the system?

Given Sony's position in the market, I really hope we're not talking about this in another year's time. The upper end of the market is covered, now let's get something for the rest of us.

Welp, Microsoft has cleared a major hurdle in their attempt to buy out the biggest publisher in the industry, effectively disguising their disgusting attempt at a monopoly under the banner of "increased customer choice." While the merger isn't a done deal still, it's looking pretty hopeless for those of us who want to see a competitive, vibrant console gaming industry.

Of course, Xbox fanboys are cheering, only able to see things through a tribal lens. They make false equivalencies with Sony purchasing declining studios like Psygnosis or upstarts like Naughty Dog or their exclusivity deals with companies (ignoring Microsoft having done both things as well well) or claiming that it's somehow Sony's fault that the Xbox One and Series X are in the sorry state that they're in, as opposed to the bad choices of Microsoft themselves.

It wasn't that long ago that the Xbox 360 was the best console of the generation. Hungry and shooting for the stars, Peter Moore's leadership turned the Xbox from the "Halo system" that they were in the 6th gen to a major force in the industry, growing to the point that even Japan could no longer ignore Microsoft, with Square Enix and Capcom essentially forced to put out Final Fantasy XIII Devil May Cry 4 on the platform in order to retain their market reach.

Then came Dan Mattrick.

Microsoft stopped courting Japanese development, stopped trying to get deals with 3rd parties for the system, and let its first party studios atrophy, including the spinning off of Bungie, the studio that gave Microsoft their first and biggest hit. Dan Mattrick didn't see the value of the gaming market, and sought to reposition Xbox as an all-around entertainment and streaming box (this despite the popularity of Roku at the time) and believed that gamers would simply go along with whatever they dictated, including that hilariously bad DRM that we all remember. Sony, by contrast, never slowed its efforts to build up its first party, or to preserve and build relationships with 3rd party studios, and retained their belief in the traditional games console, allowing them to dunk on Microsoft in a severe way.

For all Phil Spencer's talk of rebuilding the Xbox brand when he took over from Mattrick, nothing of the sort has happened. Aside from Rise of the Tomb Raider, there's been no real attempt to cut deals to lure 3rd parties their way, and the recent Gears and Halo games shows us that there's still no commitment to building a first party that's worth a damn. As a result, the Xbox One remained the joke it had been at launch, particularly outside of North America, Microsoft's only consistently competitive market. Instead, they refocused on a more service-based ecosystem, trying to kill off the concept of buying games entirely. For the longest time, the only thing the Xbox fanboys have had to gloat about was Game Pass, as that was the only thing Microsoft focused on. The Series X looked to be more of the same.

And then they bought Bethesda. And now they're trying to buy the single biggest entity in all of gaming.

Instead of trying to build a brand, they're looking for shortcuts. They can't build success, so they're going to use their endless Windows and Office money to brute-force their way into market dominance. There can be no doubt now, that they're not interested in competition. They're not going to stop buying things until people have no choice but to buy into Game Pass.

There are only three possible scenarios that can come from this acquisition spree.

1) This goes the way of Microsoft's other attempts to force their way into markets, and Microsoft cuts the bull crap. Their endless money didn't buy them success with Zune, or Windows Mobile, or Mixer, and since they had no clue how to build a presence in those markets organically, they eventually gave up. Now, while Microsoft outright leaving the games industry would be every bit as tragic as them getting the monopoly they so obviously desire, but a lack of success that forces them to revisit how they did business when Peter Moore was running the Xbox brand would be great for everyone. This is the only possible good scenario.

2) Microsoft simply continues buying every publisher in sight until they eventually buy all the major IPs, enabling them to essentially dictate the way the industry is run. Nintendo and Sony only have their first party and some smaller Japanese studios left, while Microsoft gets away with selling systems and games at exorbitant prices. Needless to say, this is the nightmare scenario.

3) The most likely, and the most "modest" outcome would be Sony and MS both entering an arms race, with both companies buying every company they can, building their consoles into impenetrable forces. There'd be no way to get major IPs on the opposing console. Basically every game is exclusive to one platform or another. Sony pulls back from releasing games on PC for fear of benefiting Microsoft. The death of the third party, and with it, the death of the mainstream gaming industry.

At least Nintendo will still be doing whatever the hell it's doing, and will likely survive in any scenario. Small comfort, but there's that.

Needless to say, there's very little chance of this being a good thing for consumers. The 9th generation is already turning out to be a bit of a popcorn fart, with releases slow to come and so often failing to meet any expectations at all. I'm not sure what the segregation of every single IP by whichever of these two multi-billion dollar corporations does to help things get better, or why anyone believes the 10th or 11th generations will be any better.

However, the Xbox fanboys are having a great time now, secure in their purchase of one console over another. Enjoy Starfield and all the future installments of Fallout and TES, and of course Call of Duty after Microsoft is done with the deals they had to put out there to look like they're not looking to monopolize the industry. I hope this isn't the start of something worse, but I've no real faith in the future.

The release of Hogwarts Legacy set the gaming media in an uproar, due to its association with Harry Potter, the JK Rowling franchise that was massively popular in the 2000s and still garners a fairly large following. This, of course, was due to comments by JK Rowling that were seen as transphobic. Now, whatever your feelings on that issue, I think we can all agree that there was plenty of discussion, on GameSpot and elsewhere, about whether the game should be supported or not. It often took a very sour turn, sometimes unforgivably so.

Now, it's too early to say for sure how the conversation will turn out as the game's only recently released, but I've noticed a lot less controversy about Atomic Heart. Now, for those of you who may be unaware, the game is a Russian developed game, funded by the Russian government, depicting an idealized Soviet Union (a typical trope of Russian propaganda, as the Russians are the only former members of the USSR to have enjoyed it). Also important is the relative lack of virtue signalling on the part of the gaming media. It certainly didn't take as long to get a review here as Hogwarts Legacy did.

I find this to be a bit concerning. For those of you who are (somehow) unaware, the Russians have been waging a brutal war of conquest in Ukraine, and while they've mostly been failing, the Putin regime shows no sign that it's willing to slow down. Many have died, many more have been displaced by this pointless war, as Putin desperately tries to rebuild the USSR through conquest. It is against this backdrop that Atomic Heart, a game that presents a heavily idealized Soviet Union, is being presented. The relative lack of reaction (at least compared to Hogwarts Legacy) is distasteful.

Am I to believe that literal Russian propaganda by the Russian government is less worthy of criticism than someone who said something banal on Twitter? Make no mistake, I don't support harassing people who play Atomic Heart any more than I would those harassing people playing Hogwarts Legacy, but I feel there's an issue with moral consistency. Why, if I might be so inclined to ask, is the response to the actual enemy propaganda so tepid in comparison to the response to the Harry Potter game? I mean, certainly it couldn't be because people in gaming media and online don't actually care about the issues they purport to care about, and find that criticizing the game made by people who likely can't see their comments isn't as much of a moral high as driving people who CAN see them to tears. Maybe it's all been a big feint, and the only reason people put up a big fuss about Hogwarts Legacy is that they felt they had the power to ruin people's days/lives.

Couldn't be that, right? I mean, we all know how Russia treats LGBT folk...

Either way, the naked hypocrisy is absolutely something that needs to be called out. I refuse to believe GameSpot is pro-Russian-aggression, so why was Atomic Heart treated with kid gloves compared to Hogwarts Legacy? While I have no hope at all for those who harass people anonymously, it's my great hope that GameSpot and others in the gaming media will take note - We notice these things. Either make the game coverage political or don't, but don't choose based on what's fashionable.

My thoughts on buying the game itself is not in the scope of this blog, but will be provided if requested.

You know them. You love them. You play games on them and work on them, and while some people might be trying to use chatbots to cheat on your essays, most people do their school assignments on them.

But keyboards are quite a topic that people might not give a lot of thought to. Many people have started their computing lives on a crappy rubber-dome keyboard, or if you were lucky, the great vintage keyboards your parents or grandparents had around, such as a Model M, g80-3000 or Dell AT101 Bigfoot.

For the sad sacks who grew up on rubber-dome keyboards, there comes a time when you realize there's better options out there. And that's when you start looking at mechanical, optical and hall effect. Lord knows, having more than two key rollover is a huge part of it, but you might also want something that feels a bit more pleasant to type on than rubber mush under pad-printed keys.

But what is better? Well, there are three general classes of keyboard switch types that you run into in the mechanical keyboard market.

Linear switches can be used to great effect by many gamers, as there's no bump or other obstruction. Your key just goes straight down. However, many of them (especially Cherry MX Red and their myriad clones) are very, VERY light, and Cherry switches in particular are often considered scratchy and not as pleasant to type on. A heavier switch might be more your speed if you want to balance typing and gaming, but there's also the next type of switch.

Tactile switches have a bump that serves as a physical feedback when typing, a little something to make sure you know that you're typing. The most common of these nowadays is the Cherry MX Brown (and clones), but they're also the weakest tactile, and it's not even close. Tactility in general is the main weakness of the modern switch, as they're based on Cherry's design, which employs a small notch on the slider to generate a frankly pathetic amount of tactility. Vintage keyboards are usually better in this regard, but Kailh's Box Royal is a heavily tactile options for those who really want to feel it, and there are endless hacks of various switches that claim to offer tactility, though some claims can be dubious. Of course, there's one last type of switch.

Clicky switches have that bump, but also an audible feedback via a click when you're actuating. The most popular of these is again taken from Cherry and cloned by everyone else, the MX Blue switch. However, they can be a bit loud. Not obscenely loud (no matter what gatekeepers like Hipyo Tech or Switch and Click might have you believe), but definitely something you can hear. Also, the mechanism that the blue switch types use to generate their click, a free-floating jacket that gets slammed by the slider, is much more rattly than the clicky switches of old. For a more precise, much more pleasant click, options like the Kailh clickbar series. What I'm using is the Kailh BOX Navy, which is a heavy, tactile clicky switch that feels great when typing, though more intermediate options BOX Jade and BOX Pink are options, as is the very light BOX White. Of course, you could also go high-end with the Zeal Clickiez, which use a traditional click leaf more akin to Alps clickies and their clones from Mattias.

Anyway, as you've probably guessed, I'm a sucker for clickies. I have board with Gateron blues (Gateron switches are usually smoother than Cherry), but my main keyboards use the BOX Navy. I know a lot of people don't like tactile and clicky for gaming, and my thoughts may be skewed by my preference for single player gaming, but I've never really had a problem. On the contrary, it's harder to hit keys CLOSE to the ones I'm trying to hit, making for fewer mistaken inputs. And of course, typing is an absolute pleasure. What about you lot, though? What kind of mechanical keyboard are you into? You still into the old school, rocking the titans of the classic keyboard space, or do you have a more modern solution? What kind of feel do YOU enjoy? I'm curious, so feel free to chime in!

Now I'm not sure if anyone's talked about it here, as a search of the forums yielded no results, but recently, the algorithmically-generated Seinfeld clone, "Nothing, Forever," was recently given a two-week suspension from Twitch following transphobic remarks from the character "Larry Feinberg," which was apparently (and ironically) picked up by automated moderation on Twitch.

Now, we can talk about the social lens of Twitch's ban, but **** me if I'm not tired of social issues. No, I'm interested in the idea of computer-generated "art." Obviously, the hot-button issue is with algorithmically-generated images, whether they could be copyrighted, and whether it could put human artists out of business. However, when looking at the "quality" of this show, it's hard to see how any artist would have trouble pushing against computer generation. For anyone who hasn't had the pleasure, here's a sample.

Let's ignore the fact that the graphics aren't amazing. The focus is clearly on generating the dialogue and movement, and it's awful. It's a train wreck of unimaginable proportions. More than that, however, it exposes the problem with algorithmically-generated content, or "AI-generated," as the media likes to say. The problem with calling this "AI" is that there's no sentience, no real intelligence. The term is pretty loaded - most people would think of something along the lines of HAL-9000 or Data or C-3PO when they hear the term "AI". What we're seeing with the current use of computers is simply taking information and putting it together in a way that can be seen as somewhat original. It's hardly new in concept - we're all familiar with SpeedTree, after all. It's just that concept being blown up to eleven, using a broader set of information to create images, or in this case, a whole show.

The problem is that things like tact, morality, creativity and basic common sense cannot be algorithmically generated. We all remember Microsoft Tay, yes? For those who don't, it was an attempt at a chatbot in 2016 that, when fed enough information, started putting out racist, sexist comments, because this is the internet. We're seeing billions of dollars pumped into OpenAI, but there's only so much refining one can do. As I type this, I'm considering how to best get my point across, what words to use, how would it be taken by the reader. Every character, every word is being considered, and even then, it may come off as a bit of a ramble. The computer here, as with Tay, is simply forming constructs based on information fed to it. Programmers can try to add blacklists, but adding the ability to make judgements based on the higher function that separates humanity from all the other beasts of the planet earth seems to be the real hurdle. How do we add creativity? How do we add aesthetic penache? How do we add all the things that make humans, well... Human? That's the reason so much of what we're seeing in this subgenre of "art" is such trash. At best, it can be made inoffensive, but I don't see how algorithms will ever make something moving, something that people care about ten, twenty, thirty years after publication, the way we feel with classics of TV, film, music, and of course video games.

We've seen it in gaming, of course, but even then, people have to put a bunch of rails on the random generation to make sure that a dungeon, for example, can be completed. It's really no substitute for something put together by professional developers, and only serves to highlight the difference. However, most of the random generation we've seen in gaming is in terrain, from the planets in No Man's Sky to some of the random caves in Oblivion or Skyrim. How would a whole game, from the ground up, using nothing but an algorithm fed with 30+ years of video games as a datset, play? What would it look like? Would it even be playable? Or would it be a complete and utter disaster like Nothing, Forever here, enjoyable only in an ironic sense?

Whatever the case, I think we're a ways off from the robots replacing actual artists.

Someone on the forums recently asked about the apparent lack of reviews for Hogwarts Legacy. While I mentioned my feelings on the matter, I thought I'd post a blog and elaborate.

Usually, a review is meant to be buying advice, or at least a critique on the quality of a given game. While a lack of bias is essential, at the end of the day we're dealing with opinion pieces. Sometimes you'll find games where either hype or fanboy culture will not tolerate any deviation from a certain consensus, but usually, a review is from the perspective of someone who doesn't want a game to be bad. After all, no one who buys a game (aside from buying some cheap shit from the bargain bin ironically) wants it to be bad.

Hogwarts Legacy is a different story, because it's being released amidst the backdrop of an increasingly venomous and hateful culture war that reached a flashpoint in gaming in 2014-2015 and in broader American society in 2016 and 2020. Talking about Hogwarts Legacy carries with it a bunch of baggage owing to JK Rowling's outspoken, if civil, disagreement with transgenderism and nonbinary theory. There's increasingly more of an expectation that anyone covering anything Harry Potter related take one side or the other. GameSpot's been trying to cover the game against the backdrop, but I doubt their efforts are appreciated much.

That brings me to the point. Why would anyone bother reviewing this game? There's no real point - For the most part, the lines have been drawn. Let's say GameSpot gives it a glowing review. Great game, wonderful mechanics, moving story, graphics are great, 10/10. What do you think would happen? They'd get railed over the coals for being supportive of bigots and their views by those on the extreme left. It damn sure wouldn't be any better if it was a bad game. Let's say it had graphical glitches that make Assassin's Creed Unity look competent, the gameplay is a slog, nothing makes sense and the voice actors sound like they phoned it in. Skip it, 6/10. The extreme right would be throwing every transphobic slur they could think of while attacking GameSpot for being "woke." We already saw that with the Cyberpunk 2077 review a while back, and that didn't carry anywhere near the preconceived biases that a Harry Potter licensed game has.

Against this backdrop, why the hell would GameSpot put a review up, other than as a cheap, cynical way to get some extra clicks? The community would be set on fire like it was in 2015, it would probably bleed into the rest of the site like GamerGate did back then, it would leave irreparable scars on community relations, and absolutely no one would be influenced one way or the other on whether to buy the game. I know I'd steer well clear, that's for damn sure. Don't think I've forgotten that permaban from Giant Bomb. However, lots of people wouldn't, and I doubt anyone wants to deal with the dumpster fire that would come out of a review of that game.

In that regard, I can't blame GameSpot for dragging their feet regarding a review of this game, and would recommend that they not release one at all.

Lastly, to any creators who might stumble upon this blog post - I get that you can't be expected to not have any opinions on any issues, but you don't need to put it on Twitter. Instead, put it in your work. Stephanie Meyer, a Mormon woman, wrote Twilight as a pro-life, pro-traditional-marriage parable, and she didn't get nearly the hatred that JK Rowling got. Blurting out your views, left or right, will get you attacked. Good content that can present your views without hectoring the audience with them might get people to think.

You'd think it'd stop after a while.

Nintendo has denied for the better part of a year a 4k switch version. The media at large got egg on their faces when the OLED was announced, no more than a Switch with a new screen type. That seemed to be the end of it all, but no, someone has to keep the fire burning.

This time, it seems to be beyond the putrid bottom of the barrel that is gaming media. The newest contender? Bloomberg, who claims that 4K dev kits have already been sent out to developers. Surprisingly, it seems that Nintendo saw fit to reply formally to this nonsense on their Twitter account.

A news report on Sept. 30, 2021(JST) falsely claims that Nintendo is supplying tools to drive game development for a Nintendo Switch with 4K support. To ensure correct understanding among our investors and customers, we want to clarify that this report is not true. We also want to restate that, as we announced in July, we have no plans for any new model other than Nintendo Switch – OLED Model, which will launch on October 8, 2021.

That is perhaps the most definitive smackdown of this rumor, or perhaps any rumor, I've seen. And quick, too. You'd think this would have stopped by now. However, it seems that speculation, not facts, are what move the needle. Why is it that this continues to be a rumor? Because the Switch doesn't perform as well on western-developed 3rd party games? Those aren't exactly going to be on Nintendo hardware that much anyway. While Japanese 3rd parties seem to be making a home on the Switch more and more with every passing year (owing as much to Japanese commuter culture as anything else), western developers haven't given Nintendo systems all that much thought in the last 20 or so years. I mean, yeah, we had that brief moment of Wii shovelware, but the lion's share of development has been on Sony and Microsoft's consoles, and t here's nothing to suggest that Nintendo joining the arms race would remedy that situation.

However, I think we all know the real reason for this rumor. The internet has turned media into a cesspool of click-chasing. Who cares if it makes sense, if it would help Nintendo in their business, or even if it's just straight up untrue? "Nintendo Switch 4K coming!" makes for great clickbait. Engagement is the name of the game, even if you're hated.

And the sad part? When the inevitable next Switch console comes out, these tools will feel vindicated, and we'll likely see "[New Nintendo System] 8K coming!" within months of the new system coming out. Taking advantage of the inevitability of new hardware is a great way to never be seen as "technically" lying, even while media's lying their asses off.

Strap yourselves in, people. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

It's no secret that the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are being aggressively scalped. It's almost impossible to buy one without paying upwards of $800, and they've been sold out everywhere for much longer than any console I can remember. Even the PS2 eventually got out there eventually.

Clearly, "supply shortages" aren't the issue, as Sony's already sold more than 10 million of these things (I imagine most of them went to scalpers).

However, what is surprising me is the apparent scalping of the PS4 and Xbox One. Those haven't exactly been on the shelves either, and unless you're looking to go a bit on the sketchy side with some used systems, you're looking to pay at least $100 more than retail. Obviously we're getting nearer to Christmas, but at the same time, why are the previous generation systems being scalped? Are people hoping to trick people into thinking they're getting the next gen systems? Entirely possible on the Xbox end, given their bad naming conventions, but aside from that, it just seems bonkers that the previous generation is being sold out as as well.

Oddly, it seems the only thing you can get in stores or online at MSRP is the Switch, despite that system selling great as well. I'm sure Nintendo's happy with the situation, effectively being the only system available for the holiday, but it seems like such a bonkers situation compared to previous generations.

Of course, it's not much better on the PC end, and hasn't been for a long time. Crypto mining has led to the dearth of availability for GPUs in the market, and even older cards are selling at a premium, owing to the lack of cards on the market.

At least CPUs are available, and we're finally seeing movement in making passable APUs to meet the need for half-decent integrated graphics since GPUs aren't out there anymore.

The question becomes, how long does this last? Do we finally see manufacturers and sellers putting meaningful purchase limits, actual action against bots that scoop up everything literally the second it's available? Or is paying $100-$400 above MSRP simply going to be the norm for consoles and graphics cards forever?

Obviously, I have no answers, but looking at the way the electronics world is moving, I can't help but shake my head.

Well, it's been a few days since the Cyberpunk 2077 review came in, and the comment section is pretty much the Gamespot equivalent of the California wildfires. It's actually interesting, really, to see a convergence of toxic elements in one spot.

One one end, we have the hype slaves. It's no secret that some gamers can be, shall we say, intense when reviewers go against the grain. It's a tale as old as the hills, really; extremely popular game gets a lower-than expected review that goes against the fawning masses, and fanboys - who often haven't played the game yet, even! - lose their fucking shit.

Remember Jeff Gerstmann's 8.8 for Twilight Princess back in the day? How people lost their absolute fucking minds when that review came out? Or how about the carousel of death threats around No Man's Sky, first for its delay, and then for its poor quality (remember what a steaming turd that game was at launch?). Most famously, Jim Sterling got a heaping pile of shit for his Breath of the Wild review.

It's no secret that a very, very loud minority of people have become so emotionally attached to games, often well before their launch, that any review that goes against their pre-conceived idea that a particular game will be this revolutionary, life-changing experience. Even the best of games are rarely, if ever that, and we all move on to the next one eventually.

On the other end, the culture war that made its way to gaming around 2015 and has only gotten more intense and divisive. Any mention of how unpleasant any depiction of women, minorities and/or lgbt might be, and the right wingers flip their shit, accusing you of being a far-left shill or trying to inject "politics" into games. Let's be real here, they're just find any excuse to express how butt-hurt they are that their worldview isn't the only one being expressed anymore.

Now I'm no fan of SJWs or insincere wokeness, but make no mistake; GameSpot's review was not some SJW hit piece. I decided to do a little bit of examination. I copied the review to a LibreOffice document file, careful not to include screenshot captions, the post-review bullets, the bylines, or re-quotes. In total, the review clocks in at 4,219 words, and is as such quite the heavy read by review standards. Of this, only 735 words are about cultural or transgender depictions in the game, and none of it is particularly preachy, content instead to lament the lack of connection to any side-quests or the main story-line. While I don't feel that absolutely everything needs to tie into everything else (unless we finally get that Pepsiman sequel...), I don't see the issue with someone pointing out that a lot of the window dressing of the world is a bit pointless in their view.

The vast majority of the review, however, focuses on how inconsequential the upgrades are, how incredibly buggy the whole thing is, and how much of a disconnect there is between the story's urgency and the game itself (a common problem with RPGs, but yeah).

Wanna guess what a good portion of the backlash is about?

This is the same shit that made me leave for three years back in 2016.

She wrote a couple of very carefully worded paragraphs about the depictions of minority cultures in the game and people are making this sound like some Resetera rant. The discussion in the review is tasteful, and she doesn't seem to unreasonably hate the game for it. It's clear that she sees this more as a case of meaningless edge for its own sake than anything else.

Don't tell that to the crazies in the comment section or on Youtube, though. To hear some of them talk, you'd think the whole review was just a diatribe on how horribly bigoted CD Projekt was. It's actually disheartening to see this sort of willful distortion and tunnel vision, not on some fringe political corner of YouTube like TYT or The Blaze, but on what is essentially a non-partisan gaming website.

Between these two groups of fucking idiots, I wonder if gamers only want soulless filler reviewed by corporate shills. Maybe that's all we deserve. It seems that these are the only things that can go by without being bombed to death by fanboys and partisans.

Of course, I know that most people don't feel this way. Just a bit of venting at the loudest, and the absolute worst, of our little niche. It's just, ****, this is always the public face gaming puts out, and it gets tiring after a while.

Can't we just enjoy what we enjoy, and discuss games like reasonable people?

Anyway, time for me to clear my YouTube search history again. Be nice to each other, and I'll hopefully have a more positive blog next time.

Sorry, but when I saw this on my feed, I simply had to.

This happened. Someone actually wrote that the act of falling down had the "exaggerated swagger of a black teen." And worse yet, it wasn't a white person, but someone who seems to be mixed race or Hispanic himself (and has set his Twitter to private as of the writing of this piece).

Jordan. Mr. Ramée. We need to talk. Aside from wanting to thank you for illustrating that minorities can, indeed, be racist, we need to talk about your apparent belief that A) races are monolithic, and B) being part black is enough to override the other parts of a mixed race person. You DO know that Miles Morales is mixed, right? Were you afraid, perhaps, that it would be too obviously contemporary to say "the exaggerated swagger of a young Latino"? Were you trying desperately to sound "woke" for your fellow Starbucks buddies?

Now I'm not a huge Spider Man fan, I'll admit, but looking at your review, the movement isn't that different from what we've seen before.

Honestly, both he and Peter Parker are wise-ass athletes with serious gymnastic abilities who glide around confidently on their webs, and both are incredibly graceful in their movement both in and out of combat.

Also, how many black teens do you see back-flipping off buildings? What exactly is it about this particular backflip that screams "black teen" to you? Would you have said something similarly stupid reviewing a game starring Peter Parker? As James "the Angry Video Game Nerd" Rolfe would say, "what were you thinking"?

Look, I get it. This is a minority character being treated seriously in a video game, and that's a damn good thing. We should see that far, far more often than we do. However, we shouldn't rush to assign every single thing a minority does to their race. Black, Hispanic and Asian people, like white people, are so much more than just their race, and to fetishize their race is just as racist as to ignore or marginalize them.

Note that this isn't meant to try to get you canceled, Jordan. This is in part to laugh at the patronizing, insincere wokeness on display, yes, but also to remind people that while our cultures are an important part of how we grow up and see the world, they are not so all-encompassing that you can look at a back flip off a building and go "yep, that's a black teen." Let's not rush to pigeonhole whole groups of people, everyone.