Short Hiatus => Warframe's Grind-fest

It's been awhile since my last post and this is due to the fact that I've had to put alot of my time into my personal life this past week or so and although I love writing post in order to escape the stressful moments of real life from time to time, whenever I was done for the day this past week, I was so mentally exhausted that I figured that writing a post while having the mental capacity of a zombie with sleep deprivation was perhaps not the brightest thing to do. Instead, I've picked up Warframe (again), seeing as it is a grind-fest through and through, it doesn't really require a whole lot of brainpower.

Throwback Crap

I've stated before that Castlevania II is a title that whenever I think about it, I feel like vomiting... and that is because it's also a grind-fest. But the thing is that what Warframe does, kinda works... in a way. The biggest reason for this, as far as I'm concerned, is that Warframe didn't have a predecessor and as such, didn't have to expand or emulate or whatever its predecessor and at the same time try to innovate new things to add to the previous game.

Not to mention the fact that the whole point of Castlevania II was to grind in order to buy something that is needed in order to progress, this is not the case with Warframe, instead, you're grinding for optional stuff that you maybe would like to have in order to expand your own gameplay feel... but it's not mandatory, well, a few are, but you naturally get the materials for those items as you play the game, i.e. you don't have to go out of your way in order to gather the materials for the mandatory items.

Grind, or No Grind ??

For instance, you might need a segment for your ship in order to, let's say, the segment for being able to craft air support charges. It might require a whole lot of materials and credits, but it's a necessity in order to progress, it's only a bonus for you as you can call in medical-, hacking-, etc. support. Now let's say you need the segment to navigate the solar system, you get the segment as a reward for a mission, why, because it's necessary to be able to navigate the solar system in order to play the game.

Then you have all the different weapons, warframes and archwings that you're able to craft by either

1. grind and gather materials, blueprints and credits (most basic tier stuff's blueprints are purchasable through the in-game market for non-premium currency, aka. credits)
2. purchase most things from the market out right for platinum (premium currency)

Rarely do you ever have to pay for anything with platinum because you can find blueprints for basically everything as long as you have to patience. The only thing you'll have to pay platinum for is for increasing the size of your inventory, but that being said, they've implemented a system that allows you to go to a certain hub and put your undesired items on auction so that other people can trade with you and in this manner you can earn platinum since it's viable for trading.

Clearing A Misconception or Two

Now I know that you're probably thinking "oh great, another pay to win game :@" no no no no, this is not a "pay to win" game, I'd like to coin the new phrase (new as far as I know) "pay to skip" because you can skip the grind and the massive arbitrary wait times by buying stuff with plat. Now I know that "pay to skip" is a little confusing term, since there's alot of games - most mobile - that you can e.g. skip the gathering process by shelling out a little bit of dough... but that, whether inadvertently or not, results in you getting a lead on your opponent. But see, here's the thing, Warframe is PvE (Player vs. Environment) focused, so you're not really getting a lead on anyone except the AI-controlled enemies. For those of you who are competitive focused; yes, there's a PvP mode as well...

The reason why this game has a premium based currency in addition to the regular in-game currency is because this game is free-to-play on steam and they need some form of revenue in order to maintain servers, pay their staff, etc. (as is the common trend for most F2P games).

So if you like grinding, fast-paced action, space ninjas, instance based games... then do yourself a favour and get this game ASAP and have yourself a grand old time ^^

Oh, and you can also have future-mutated cats (upper) and dogs (lower) as pets that aid you in missions <3

Kavat:

Kubrow:

Remember to Stay Awesome, TAG Signing Out! 

Looking Back At: Nintendo Shuts Everything Down

Small disclaimer here: Neither Nintendo's logo nor their people show up to people's doors with sunglasses pointing guns at people telling them to shut things down, this picture was made only for satire purposes.

Nintendo, may I take a knee, amongst other developers, you stand the test of time and have been recognised as the very saviour of the video game industry as you brought it back from the grave after E.T went ahead and fucked everything up... But you gotta keep trusting people a little bit more...

The thing I love about this generation of gaming is that there's so many tools for people who have the passion, knowledge and ability to make games of their own. With that, comes alot of controversy from time to time - whether we're talking about games like Hatred or people making games that are in one way or another too similar to some other game - which is why I decided to tackle this topic.

When the first console war took place (between SNES and Genesis/Master System), the one think you'd quickly realise is that Nintendo took their IPs very seriously and rarely let somebody else tamper with them, whereas SEGA were more lenient with this and instead almost embraced 3rd party developers and fully supported them.

Now, you'd probably think that since there's so many tools for people to make their own games that Nintendo would be a little more forgiving with what people make as long as it doesn't directly copy their IPs... NOPE!!

Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R)

Well, to be completely fair, this one did in one way completely copy Metroid 2: The Return of Samus since it's a remake, so that Nintendo was going to shut this down came as no surprise. But it still really sucks!!

This is/was a project that a bunch of people decided to make in order to try and get the second Metroid game - which was on the GameBoy - screw attacked into this generation and they worked on this for almost a decade. The reason behind this is probably that Nintendo for one reason or another didn't seem to want to make this remake and I have to wonder... why??

Nintendo already made a remake of the first one and released it on the GameBoy Advance titled Metroid: Zero Mission... so why not do the same with the second game!? So I'd guess that they decided to take matters into their own hands and make it themselves. Once again, I know that Nintendo were in their legal rights blah blah blah, this is the same as Blizzard vs. Nostalrius disclaimer I made... but once again, why aren't they seeing the bigger picture??

These people weren't doing this for any sort of profit, it was once again only for the love of the game. So... once again... why are Nintendo shooting themselves in their PR foot? The fact that they made this remake and people would share it around, would to some degree peak some peoples interest in the Metroid franchise which in turn would probably make these people try to seek out more Metroid games and in turn earn Nintendo more revenue, not stealing it from them.

I mean, look at this:

That's what Metroid 2 looked like on the GameBoy...

Now look at this:

It's like fucking night and day!!

So when this fan-made, NON-PROFIT, remake was released it didn't take long for Nintendo sending them a cease and desist letter telling them to take it down. Thankfully (as far as I'm concerned) alot of people still managed to download it while the download was still up and active who have decided that 'screw Nintendo, this game is amazing' and decided to upload this to various sites and whatnot so others might have a chance to download this.

AM2R Blog (more or less dead nowadays, but still an interesting read)

Pokémon Uranium

Now here's where things start treading into a little gray area. Yes, Pokémon is more or less a Nintendo IP, but as opposed to AM2R, every asset was completely original and the only thing that was copied from Nintendo/Game Freak was the whole aspect of Pokémons, capturing them and battling with them... and well the logo sort of too, but they changed the colour palette from blue and yellow to dark and brighter green so while it's still the same "font", I think this is from a copyright stand point still okay (don't quote me on that, still haven't got any sort of lawyer's degree).

As with the former, this was a fanmade game that the people who made it also worked on for almost a decade as well. The creators made completely new and original Pokémons, towns, people, music - like I said; ALL the assets... and people were really looking forward to this game, more so than the former.

So they release it and it got downloaded 1,500,000 times before Nintendo once again decided to show up, but how they handled this game, I've gotta cut them some slack here. Instead of outright sending them a cease and desist letter (main reason here is probably that they "couldn't" do it but once again, don't quote me) and instead simply told them that they wish they would take this down for one reason or another, the creators decided that they wanted to respect Nintendo's wishes and shut down the whole site. But it was downloaded 1,500,000 times, so as with the prior game, people decided to put up their own download links so other could download it.

So while Nintendo wasn't really cold blooded here, I still don't get it...

I mean look:

You can clearly see similarities here... but once again, they didn't do this for profit, they only did this for fun and for the love of the game. And also once again, maybe somebody decided that they didn't wanna invest in the money to get a Nintendo handheld to just play Pokémon, the fact that this was released on PC (point here being that alot of people have a PC), they could get this for free, try it out, like it and buy a Nintendo DS or whatever and getting a "true" Pokémon game... earning revenue for Nintendo, AGAIN!!!

I would give the link to the official site, but it's (as stated above) taken down.

Conclusion

I love games, the industry (for better or worse) and the developers whether they be AAA or Indie... but it always breaks my heart to see that some developers are so greedy that they shut down non-profit games that their fans make as a tribute to the game that they try to emulate or make a remake of. If these games had some form of price tag on them and not giving Nintendo their share, THEN I would completely understand this since in that case they would be stealing profit.

And it hurts even more when it's a developer that have more or less dictated your entire fucking childhood to do something like this, because you've more or less been looking up to those developers, since you knew even back then that their games were - usually 90% of the time - up to par with the rest and really good overall. You grow up adoring them... and they do something like this... that fucking sucks.

As with my Blizzard vs. Nostalrius, I understand that Nintendo are in their full legal right, they are a massive company and want to protect their reputation by protecting their IPs and I'm not trying to undermine them or something... It just sucks...

Remember To Stay Awesome, TAG signing out!

YouTube Done Fucked It Up!!

Let me start off by first saying that no, I'm not a youtuber/content creator, I'm only a "content consumer" - if you will - so this is not affecting me in a revenue sense in any way. But that being said, what the hell is going on at Youtube HQ!?

A couple of days ago, Youtube updated their ToS (Terms of Service) about what's considered advertiser-friendly content, and... well... let's just say alot of youtubers are losing their shit right now...

The new "guidelines"

What,,, the,,, fuck...!?

Perspective

One thing you've gotta understand is that alot of youtubers are doing it as a job and you don't even have to go to extremes such as e.g Pewdiepie, Markiplier, Game Grumps, etc. because - as far as I've gathered - just as much as 200,000 subscribers (which is alot in it's own right, but it's far from 2,000,000) can earn you a fair sum of money per month, ergo, you can make a sustainable living off of Youtube given the fact that you can stick your head out of the mass of others and find your demographic.

So here comes good old Youtube along and start waving their goddamn fucking political correct dick around and updating these terms (probably) in order to try and hamper cyber-bullying. Don't get me wrong, the goal is noble and I support it, but I can't for the love of fuck agree to these means, not when it comes to Youtube where it's been all about YOU!!

Picking apart the points

So let's pick these stupid-ass bullet points apart and let's look at why this is the dumbest shit they could have ever tried to enforce onto the Youtube community:

Sexually suggestive content, including partial nudity and sexual humor

Right off the bat, this is confusing as fuck. "Sexually SUGGESTIVE content", I'd like to argue that this is just a matter of perspective and overall what you find to be sexual. Look, there's some fucking weird people on the internet, that's just a fact, so besides the usual of boobs and ass, somebody is probably gonna find a fucking bottle "sexually suggestive", so until further guidelines... what? However, partial nudity is still a little more clear, the only problem here is that they haven't specified what is considered as partial nudity, in the sense that where's the line drawn? Besides, you're telling me that there aren't allowed to be anymore dick jokes in any video on Youtube if you want to be eligible for revenue from that video? Yeah, good luck with that...

Violence, including display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism

Violence!? What, so every fucking gaming channel ever is just gonna have to play fucking Golf with Friends or some shit!? This might just refer to real life violence, to which I concur, but once again, they are being so fucking vague here... define what type of violence you're referring to. Display of serious injury and events related to violent extremism, I mean, yeah, people probably shouldn't upload some video in which terrorists beheads people or something on Youtube (given the fact of how many kids browse around on the site) but once again, since they didn't specify if this is only limited to real life events or if this even "transcends" to fiction.

Inappropriate language, including harassment, profanity and vulgar language

Now this one is just flatout fucking stupid!! Obviously I'm not counting the harassment part, but the rest. Inappropriate language, profanity and vulgar language... come on, seriously, Youtube... get your fucking head out of your fucking ass... this is the internet, you know, where people tend to express themselves in ways that's not acceptable on say TV. Let's say for example here, Game Grumps, the Let's Play show that basically lives off of profanity and vulgar langage, you're telling me that atleast something along the lines of 90% of their videos suddenly aren't eligible for monetization? Because once you've been doing Youtube for long enough (and do it successfully), things start to snowball at some point and you might win someone new over and that new person might perhaps wanna check out what else you've done. So before these new ToS (if they actually brute force them) you would still generate revenue from older videos just by new people wanting to watch what you made before they discovered you or your longstanding subscribers wanting to re-watch your older videos... NOT ANY MORE!! 

Promotion of drugs and regulated substances, including selling, use and abuse of such items

Again, vagueness, if this actually applies to fiction = no more (amongst other games) Fallout let's plays!! And for the record, I've yet to see someone successful on Youtube actually showcasing selling, use or abuse drugs and regulated substances.

Once again, if this only applies to real life; NO SHIT!!... if it applies to fiction; get your head out of your fucking ass!!

Controversial or sensitive subjects and events, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown

Oh, oh my god... this political correctness is killing me!!

All jokes aside... vague as fuck... and also, this is probably the dumbest shit in these "guidelines". One of my biggest inspiration and favourite youtuber of all time, Boogie2988, has several videos where he talks about how he handled his suicide thoughts back in the day, how to prevent people you know from committing suicide, how to recognise suicidal thoughts before they get to serious, depression stuff, etc. and basically all of those videos were flagged for braking these ToS, i.e they've become non-monetized because suicide is a very sensitive subject, I get that, but the videos aren't about how to commit suicide, they're meant to help others who are dealing with these things and helping them overcome those thoughts and live a happy live. But you don't even have to go to such serious topics for this to be true... if this means what I think it means, people aren't allowed to give their thoughts on things like the presidential election, the ongoing war in the middle-east and whatnot. I also can't fathom why they would have to include that last part - "even if graphic imagery is not shown" - beacuse this seems to indicate that if I as much as mention anything about something that could be related to, let's say, hurricane Katrina, my monetization rights to that video is thrown out of the window... yeah, seems fair right?? Can we also touch upon the fact that this is dumb as shit? Literally ANYTHING can be interpreted as controversial or sensitive subject depending on individual history with that subject... and how much of an attentionwhore somebody wants to be.

Own thoughts

As I mentioned before, this is probably an attempt from Youtube to try and stop cyber-bullying... atleast that's what it looks like at first. But if we take into the consideration that they first included the option of watching full movies on Youtube if you pay a sum of money and then later on released the concept of Youtube Red - which in it's own right is a great platform for content creators because they get direct revenue from their fans for watching that video, but at the same time probably makes alot of their fans turn away and lose interest -, this seems to me like some "higher force" is putting pressure on Youtube and trying to turn Youtube into a sort of internet TV platform, which it is in a sense, but Youtube has never before had an issue with people spewing their opinion.

Granted that they never condoned hate speech and such and they've actually enforced this by having some channels removed throughout their history. But this is just shady as fuck... And it's also weird that they try to basically "starve off" the people who would make this content in order to not get sued for killing of a channel (or something)... I don't know... this is just a kick in the nuts as far as I'm concerned.

Conclusion 

If they actually go through with this and alot of youtubers are forced to quit, I feel like it's not gonna take long before somebody like Twitch or Netflix start their own Youtube-like platform because now there's all of a sudden a bunch of content creators looking for a new platform without censorship to this degree.

The only good thing that can come out of this - as far as I can see - is that perhaps now, the embodiment of internet pestilence know as Keemstar might finally die off so that the internet might be a slightly happier place.

Hidden Gem: Cybernetic RPG Shooter

(Well, when I say "hidden", I don't mean it in the same way as Battle of Olympus, because this one got it's fair share of attention when it released.)

Gushing time

E.Y.E Divine (Fucking) Cybermancy... holy hell where do I even start!? It's a PC exclusive that was released worldwide July 29, 2011 by a little French studio, with only 12 people, known as Streum On Studio and it was built by using Valve's Source Engine.

Look, I'm not gonna beat around the bush here: this game is FUCKING COMPLEX AS SHIT!!!

Atleast if you wanna get a full grip on what to upgrade, research, invest in, find hidden skills and shit, the list goes on and on...

Personal history with the game

Just to give you a little backstory here; a friend of mine recommended this game to me, due to the fact that he knows that I'm a masochistic gamer that likes games who don't hold your hand and instead you're just dropped into a world/game with only your wits to figure shit out (yes, I'm a Souls fan as well), so I looked it up, saw the art, and was hooked. I told him that this game seems interesting to which he had an extra copy of it on Steam and gave it to me as a gift... 10 minutes in and I dismissed this as an overhyped standalone mod which had zero innovation, dumb story, and lots of other useless crap.

Oh my fucking god, if I could, I would go back in time and slap some sense into my younger self... so I'm not gonna spoil too much here, but as far as mechanics go, think of this way: this is a real-time RPGFPS, what I mean by this is that yes, you have guns which you shoot people with but in more or less every FPS game, a headshot means a guaranteed kill/frag... not in this one (and this is off-putting for most people it seems), in this game, the fact that you shoot a guy means in a sense that you are eligible for doing damage to that enemy. Before I go on, I'd like to point out that I haven't digged through the code, but this is how I see it based on my time playing this game:

Useless hypothetical calculation

Bullet hits => initiate damage calculation

Weapon damage = 127

Accuracy = 58 => calculating base damage while taking the accuracy skill into consideration

Area = head => let's say that this means that damage is multiplied by 2

RNG (Random Number Generator) = nothing special (= 1)

Total damage for this shot = 127*0.58*2*1 = 147.32 (if we simply assume that accuracy and RNG are percentages that gets multiplied to the base damage of the weapon)

Now keep in mind that this is not in any way representative of how the game actually handles these calculations, this is just an example and the real calculation is definitely alot more complicated, but you get the idea. So what this means is that if you shoot someone in the face, you might see a little dialogue popping up saying something like "Bullshit!! Ultra-failed attack" to which the guy just keeps on moving. This has probably more to do with the RNG rather than anything else, because I've seen this happen with both an accuracy level of 20 and 130. 

Reason of it's "downfall"

Like I said above, this is one of the things that are off-putting for most people because they look at this game as just a futuristic FPS game and most of these people aren't familiar with RPG (and more to the point; JRPG) genres, and so was I when I tried this game for the first time.

The game also has a 'researching' aspect of the game that leads to newer technologies and weapons, but the problem is that it sort of blends in with the other menus, so personally I didn't know of the researching aspect until like half of my first playthrough (once I got back into it with a new view of the game). There are pictures of the complete research tree online for those who don't want to go through this cycle of trying to research something and not get really something out of it, but don't take that the wrong way, every research matters in the end, so I refrain from posting the picture here since it's easy to find and also for the reason that I don't want to spoil it for the masochists out there.

Ending comparison (??)

Many gamers still today keep going on and on and on about the incredible ending of Spec Ops: The Line and while I agree that the ending of that game was very thought provoking indeed (as is the major plot points through out the game), there isn't any other game out there that I've played that comes close to the major mindfuck you get at the end of this game. Once again, I'm not gonna spoil it, but it does take a little bit of effort and brainpower from the gamer's side in order to actually understand the true ending of the game... but once you do, your mind is gonna be blown to pieces and you'll shit bricks for weeks to come.

My biggest small hate towards it

Now I know that I've basically nothing but praising the game thus far and you might wonder if there's something that I don't like... and yeah, I have one major gripe with the game...

As I mentioned before, the game has a form of researching aspect to it and most of the things you can research are unlock naturally as you research it's prerequisites. But there are some research that can only be unlocked by finding the object of that particular research, which are randomly dropped by enemies when you kill them (silver briefcases). Although this is a generally good way to go about when it comes to this form of progression - downside here is that it induces a form of grinding - the fact that the droprate for some of these research objects are so, so fucking low means that you're gonna have to grind the living hell in order to unlock every research. Personally, I spend a good 30 - 40 hours just to get the last research objects, but hey, at that point I was something along the lines of level 70, so most enemies could be moved down like dry grass, so it wasn't a hard process to go through, just time consuming.

Other than that, I have nothing else against this game...

Conclusion

So do yourself a favour and get this game on Steam, It's relatively cheap, it uses the Source Engine but the settings can be lowered to the point where a toaster could almost run it, it's a fun game to just play through and mess around in, and overall just a good time.

Remember to stay awesome, TAG signing out!  

1 AAA Developer Who Actually Gives a Fuck

I came across this in my Facebook feed: PC Gamer - Fallout 4 pays tribute to player who passed away ... I would encourage you to read the article, it's not that long.

First of, just to make it clear, I've never had anything against Bethesda... in fact, I'd go as far as to say that they are one of my favourite developers and certainly my favourite AAA developer. Personally, I've always been more of an Elder Scrolls guy rather than a Fallout one, this is not because I think that Fallout in any way, the reason is that I'm a bigger fan of fantasy setting rather than a post-apocalyptic one. And although some rag on Bethesda for usually releasing half-assed games and later patching them up, here's two points that I'd like to point out as a sort of counterargument to these haters:

• They patch their issues up relatively quickly compared to most other AAA developers.

• When making open world games with the size and scope that most Bethesda games have, you're bound to make a couple of blunders.

So with that being said, something tugged really hard on my heart strings when I read this article, not solely because of the fact that the poster's brother died (because I didn't know the guy, but don't get me wrong, I still feel sorry for the guy), but the fact that a AAA developer actually responded to a fan's post about his brother passing away, by making him a character in Fallout 4 and in doing so in a sense immortalising him. Putting deceased people in games in order to pay tribute to them is nothing new, but a AAA developer going out of their way to do that to a fan's late brother... that really struck something in me.

I don't want to drag on this post too long, this is just something I wanted to share in order to give some indication that although I said in one of my earlier posts that I MOSTLY, not entirely, have faith in the Indie section, there are still some indication that AAA might give two shits about their fans...

Remember To Stay Awesome, TAG Signing Out!