After recently finding out that Zero was going to be in the upcoming Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, I wanted to find more details and info about it. I was on Youtube when I found this video:shock:. In case anybody needed proof of just how decent Zero is, there ya go. I'm glad to see that the original Zero is back. Its the Zero that became my all-time favorite, I don't wanna sound like I dislike Megaman Zero, but he's no Maverick Hunter...8)
Its my birthday! Another year older, another year wiser. As I look back through the ages I find that I've done some things I've wanted to do, accomplished some things I wanted to accomplish, I've spent a good number of years on this planet...and have nothing to show for it. Man, I gotta step my game up...
Oh yeah, happy birthday to MJ too! (use to play his game like bananas)8)
I'm often on the fence as to whether or not DLC is a good thing or a bad thing. On the plus side, it does add to your gaming experience, providing extra characters, maps, weapons, etc. DLC sometimes contains patches to fix bugs, which is a good thing. However on the negative side, it feels a lot like I'm getting nickel and dimed. Why can't these extra characters, weapons, etc. be apart of the original release. I remember back on the older consoles, if you wanted a new character, you had to beat the game with another character, you want an alternate costume, just play through the game. Now it feels like I'm getting an incomplete game. IMO Fallout 3 was hella-smaller than Oblivion but with all the additional add-ons it's slightly more comparable to Oblivion's size. But why did it take an additional $50, on top of the sixty I paid, to get there? Furthermore, it almost seems like a crutch for developers; they can hurry and rush a game out without doing a full check for bugs, because they know that later on they can release a patch. In the olden days, games were put through a very rigorous QA process, I don't remember there being nearly as many reports of bugs and glitches back then, as there are now. There wasn't this mentality of "if there is a mistake, we'll fix it later." Am I wrong for wanting the entire game up front? I believe I was watching an interview with Bioware, and they were talking about how they were already working on DLC for Dragon Age Origins, a game which hasn't even released yet. I feel like DLC should be an afterthought; you've released your game and gotten feedback, then decided to make various additions. Don't go into the development process thinking, we'll give them this with the game and charge them extra for that. Dragon Age Origins hasn't released yet, instead of working on DLC, work on adding that content to the pre-existing game to make it that much more of an expansive title. Of course there will be those people that say, if you don't want to pay for it, then you don't have to. But I feel like if I buy a game and another gamer buys the same game, I shouldn't be able to have a more wondrously expanded experience just because I have more money than he does...guess I'm not as on the fence about it as I thought I was
Looks kinda plain,I don't wanna use it until I do something kick@ss to it...
Why are there bad games in existence? I don't understand how bad games are made. I can understand how bad movies and bad songs are made but not how bad games are made. Can we blame the publisher, or the developer, of the testers, or even ourselves? Or, is it an anomaly and no one can be blamed for it? In my opinion, I'm gonna have to say that the blame is shared between each of the four parties listed above. Let's start with the party that I think is least to blame, which, believe it or not, is the publisher. I know it probably sounds strange, but hear me out. The publisher is looking to make money, plain and simple, we're all aware of this. They have their analysts look at the trends and market numbers and from the info they get back, they look and see what IPs are out there that can turn the most profit. That's what they're looking to do, make money. Do they care about playability, or graphics, or fun factor? I could assume they don't. They care about the money that'll be made from the game. They're a business and that's what businesses do. So, to say that a game is bad because the publisher didn't give the developer enough time to finish the project and they were only interested in making money isn't a good argument, its not really an argument at all. Duh. Anybody who thinks that a publisher is some benevolent entity who wants to move video gaming forward and isn't concerned about profits is only fooling themselves. Publishers make money and that's all they do, they may cut production short to meet a deadline but that's to be expected, can't make money if you don't meet your deadlines. So, there is a little blame that can be placed on the publisher but not very much, they're a known evil. You can't leave a $1000 bill by a thief and be surprised when its gone, you already know he's gonna steal it, he's a known evil. You can't expect a publisher to do what's in the best interest of the game, only what's in the best interest of the profits; its a known evil. So who's next in line for blame then? That would have to be the developers. Developers, or the people that actually make the game, have timelines to follow. At a certain point of the developement cycle, certain "milestones" need to be reached. These timelines aren't anything new that're just sprung on the developers a day or two before, they know well in advance. I feel like if the developers are unable to reach the "milestone" within the given time, they should speak up and say "we need more time to make this perfect, we can't in good conscience show/give this to you with it being the way it is." Will that ruffle some publisher feathers? Sure, but they can't really release a game if you have nothing to show 'em. They'll probably make and hold the developer to an even stricter schedule in the future but at least that gives more time to fix whatever little bug is causing a flaw. (I mean it better just be a little bug, and not some huge problem that's been present for some time and can't be fixed) When the time comes for the game to actually be released, developers should put a firm foot down if the game is not perfect, and vehemently refuse to send it out with flaws, hold on to it until its absolutely perfect. I'm sure some high level exec will be enraged, but there's something to be said about taking pride in your work. In my opinion, if you're a developer of a game, you should be absolutely in love with video games. You should put the utmost quality and care into your work, and be passionate enough about it to be willing to make some people angry that its not ready yet. Games have been pushed back once or twice before, right? I love video games, quality video games. If I were at the helm of production, rest assure that every single aspect of every minute detail is going to be perfect, or better. My thoughts would be on that of the player, I would want them to love the game as much as I did. At the end of the game I would want them to say to themselves, "that was a great game." I couldn't release a game if that weren't always going to be the end result. Which is why I feel like developers are somewhat more to blame, they need to be firm and stand up to publishers. Its because they're not doing this that we have bad games. However, you know the old saying about pointing a finger, there are three pointing back at you. We, as gamers, are more responsible for bad games than publishers and developers. Don't throw your rocks at me yet. We are pretty predictable when it comes to games. Everybody and their brother has at least one GTA game. Every GTA that comes out sells more than the one before. Obviously people like GTA. Devlopers and publishers pick up on this, and essentially want to give you, the gamer, exactly what you want. You want open world gun blasting action, so they give you "True Crime: Streets of L.A.," "25 to Life," and a newly formatted "Driver." These games blow, but they're alot like GTA; publishers and developers (even though developers should) don't see what the big problem is. Rehashes of popular games make up a great deal of bad games. We need to be willing to try something new, there was a time when Guitar Hero and Rock Band didn't exist. Then, there are the loyalist gamers, the ones who buy any game that has its franchise's name on it. No matter if any improvements have been made, or problems addressed, or anything. They just buy it cause they always have. I am myself guilty of this, I have five different "Dynasty Warriors" titles. These are all essentially the same game with all the same problems and faults the the previous had. And that's what happens, as long as the people involved with making the game know us dumb gamers will buy their crap, they have absolutely no reason to try and improve it. It might be a bad game, but the sales charts say we don't mind bad games. Multiple sequels to games also make up a great number of bad games. Another way that gamers contribute to bad games is by not doing their homework. We get caught up in the hype machines of games. We don't play demos or read reviews, just go out and buy the game cause we "heard it was good." Now of course there are gonna be some gamers, myself included, that say they always check things out before buying. However a handfull of people doing that isn't enough. If a bad game is released with enough hype surrounding it, it'll probably sell very well. This is known by publishers, they release a bad game but spread the word on how good it is, and you go make an uniformed desicion to buy their lousy game. So what if you take it back to Gamestop, they already got theirs, and you're not gettin' it back either. See, you might not even be cognizant of it, but you're to blame for bad games more than publishers and developers, I am too. We need to realize that its us who control the game industry, we need to take a bold stand in letting the creators of games know that we will no longer put up with sub-par games. We can't do this by writing blogs or sending letters, we can only do this in our actions. Stop buying bad games and they'll stop making bad games. Not to point and laugh, but I seem to remember Midway losing $76 million and cutting their crappy IPs. See, you stop buying, they'll stop making. Okay, so I've played the blame game with publishers, developers, and ourselves, so who's left? The party that I think is most responsible for the existence of bad games. Yep, I'm talking about the game testers. The video game industry has a luxury that the movie and music industry doesn't really have. They have the opprotunity to find out about flaws in their project before their project comes out. That has got to be the biggest cushion ever. Its like letting your teacher look at your homework and tell you any problems that are there before you even turn it in, then you have a chane to fix them. It sounds like I should blame the developers for this hunh? And they may partly be at fault. But I have to imagine that its the testers. How many games have you played with bugs in them? The tester's job is to try and break the game. They do all the things you wouldn't think to do, in an effort to crash the game or find a bug. But, does that mean they don't just play the game straight on thru? I played Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Xbox 360, and on every stage (at times more than once) I found myself saying "are you kidding me?" It was ridiculous; especially towards the later levels (if you've played it, you know what I'm talking about). I wondered if the game had been tested at all, but the closing credits showed that there were testers. Did they just not speak up, or did they spend so much time trying to crash the game that they didn't just play it? Or even worse, did they not even test the game and just said it was ok. I don't know the answer, but I was livid. The tester should be that net that captures all the garbage and only lets good game through. They should stand up and blatantly say, if applicable, "this game isn't good" or "this game isn't fun at all" or even "This game shouldn't be made, its terrible." Could they lose their job? I don't know. Would I be willing to lose my game testing job to stand up and say what needed to be said? Unquestionably. Like I stated above, I really love video games, I can't imagine getting to test a bad game and just looking for bugs. Bad games make me mad, I mean really seriously angry. They shouldn't be there, they shouldn't exist. The burden is on testers, tell the developers that they have a bad game, and if they have any integrity or love for their craft, they'll scrap it or give it a complete overhaul, maybe even at their own expense. But stand up and fervently explain everything that's wrong, not just bugs! Tell them their story makes no sense, tell them their controls are sluggish, tell them its boring and unoriginal, tell them that they should be ashamed to call themselves game designers and developers, tell them whatever you need to tell them to stop bad games from coming out! I can't take it anymore! There shouldn't be a game created that scores less than 9 on a 10 point scale or less than 4 on a 5 point scale! There is no reason for a bad game to exist! I believe in the quality of video games. If video games were a religion, quality would be its Jesus. The only thing that could save it. But for it to exist there has to be belief in it first. You have to stand up to any and every opposition that would stop you from making a quality video game. Heh, I sound like a preacher. But seriously, NO MORE BAD GAMES!!
I always hear from other 360 owners about which games should be on Live Arcade. I myself have a slew of good candidates for ports to XBLA. I've said games like the old arcade X-Men or The Simpsons arcade game, and of course Marvel vs. Capcom 2. A lot of people have similiar lists and wonder why XBLA doesn't have all kind of great games available for download. What most people don't consider is all the new games that XBLA has introduced. Games like Braid, Castle Crashers, and even Mega Man 9 were introduced through XBLA. The focus seems to be so much on getting all the old games we used to enjoy that people miss what, in my newly formed opinion, should be the purpose of XBLA. It should introduce new gameplay, new IPs, or new takes on old ideas that may have been forgortten. With XBLA, teams are able to release blockbuster games without having to go through all the motions of releasing a blockbuster game like advertising, packaging, or press conferences/publicitry stuff. What would happen if the main focus of XBLA was on porting old classics, is that all the newly fabricated games wouldn't shine as brightly. If you saw Killer Instinct and some other unknown game that you hadn't heard of, and you could only pick one, which would you be more inclined to spend your Microsoft points on? You could be completely missing out on a gem just to relive "C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!" Now don't get me wrong, I like the classics as much as the next gamer; but a part of me is glad that there isn't an overflow of ports showing up on XBLA (or at least there hasn't been yet). XBLA should be the stage to introduce new things not a trophy case showing off great things past.
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