Again, money. She explained that in the media business especially, launching a new IP not only takes time and money but new media has to fight already established media for attention which is the big reason why they decide to go this route. This is the safer, but lazier way of doing it-taking an existing IP and changing it to the point you can do your own spinoff that may in time become its own creation.
This makes sense in theory, but where it starts to fall apart for me is when you change it so much that the only real relation it has is the name of the IP, or (as was the case with something like Cowboy Bebop,) you are so outwardly hostile to the fans who would recognise the IP that it renders the whole point of having that name recognition moot because the only people willing to watch your show will be the ones unaware of far superior original (and maybe a handful of hate-watchers with morbid curiosity).
Again I have to wonder how many Halo fans are watching the Halo show vs people who know the name but have never played the games vs general sci-fi fans who'll watch anything with robot suits and aliens. Presumably they crunched the numbers and they came out black but I take nothing for granted with modern executives.
Jim is really like a broken record. Most people are not stupid enough to fall for paying extra for digital bundles. Most people don't buy in game cosmetics. Most people just play a game and enjoy it
Jim, not all people have the self control of morphine addict with his finger on the clicker, just don't buy them. There is no need for a 15 minute video on this in the current year.
In better world with better writers, fanbase would have love this. Unfortunately, writing teams are infested with retards, who replacing race and sex of already established characters and insert faggotry as well:
Witcher, due to Cavill playing Geralt from both books and games, replacing Triss and Yennifer to poojeetas and Fringillia to nigress,
recent one with resident evil with Wesker.
New failout kerfuffle with them nuking Shady Sands and shitting over everything before F3. These are ones I personally care about. There's plenty more of that
I would love to see something good, that comes out of game adaptations, but only stuff that's bearable is fans' stuff
I should specify in my case I was talking about the mind set we're told to take when we make video games based on existing properties, not games into movies. I know we normally talk about video game adaptations as making movies based on video games, but there has been a long history of adapting books and movies into video games. Hollywood types when we have to interact with them in the gaming still have this entire mindset that the tiny ass budgets they give us for adaptations and the miniscule audiences we can gain by using their properties (which are consistently so much smaller than the installed audience we expect to see from most A/AA/AAA studios and publishers just for the logo on the box that they get rounded off when we reduce it to a single decimal place) must be something we can't possibly be prepared to handle such a large amount of. A and AA games now have budgets that dwarf the size of most Hollywood movies and teams to rival them as well. AAA is a monster so large that I work in it daily and I find it hard at times to think about how big those operations can get. Hollywood is really up their own ass in this idea that they can do better and that they have the larger audiences, when they really, really don't. However the big publishers either sold all their movie rights years ago before video games became a juggernaut industry, or they know they can occasionally top up the discretionary budget with a rights sale. EDIT: New Jim review which I forgot to mention. Stellar Blade [a]. He gave it a 7.5/10. Metacritic 82%. Meta user score is 9.3. I need to add it to the queue for review reviews. I saw it when I was about to write the next review review.
To keep it on topic, I find the 93 metacritic score for Stellar Blade a bit overrated, nothing jumps out at me, but that might just be me, to make this game worth that. Of course, that means I find myself agreeing with Jim more, which is annoying, but sometimes happens. I won't steal your review review though.
To keep it on topic, I find the 93 metacritic score for Stellar Blade a bit overrated, nothing jumps out at me, but that might just be me, to make this game worth that. Of course, that means I find myself agreeing with Jim more, which is annoying, but sometimes happens. I won't steal your review review though.
The 93 user score is definitely over-inflated by people giving the game 10s as some sort of retarded reverse boycott. I never trust the user score for polarizing games because it's always skewed by dozens of people giving it 10s or 0s, respectively, so it's completely unreliable. It's much the same way Jim will give ridiculously low scores for games he's decided to hate for personal reasons rather than objective ones.
The 82% critic review seems much more accurate, because from everything I've heard so far Stellar Blade is a game with really fun combat and some cool ideas but bogged down by the usual AAA bloat (unnecessary open worlds, crafting bullshit etc)
In a bid to push the thread back on-topic, I decided to peruse Jim's Twitter. I lost interest about 6 tweets in, but I did find some fun stuff. First up, yet another absolutely horrific wrestling poster:
Aside from the guy(?) on the far right who looks like Ed Boon designed a rival for Tom Daley, I cannot imagine wishing to spend an evening in a room with these men, least of all when they're barely dressed and groping each other.
I certainly wouldn't want to pay £20+ for the privilege:
I leave it up to you to decide if the 'family' or 'child' ticket option is the creepiest.
Other than that, we have a failed attempt by Jim to go viral with a good old-fashion bait post:
(L)
As you can see the engagement is incredible. Almost a quarter of a million views --basically Jim's follower count-- yet only 4.4k likes and a pathetic 354 replies. We did get a cow crossover in the replies though:
(L)
I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure adjusted for inflation Glinner gets better metrics on a reply to Jim than Jim does for his own tweets.
Note: I couldn't get any archives to work for the tweets, if someone else is able to get them I'll update the post.
From a game development standpoint ludonarrative dissonance is an interesting problem to solve. As it demands that we harmonize the writing tone of the written narrative with that of the tone of gameplay and mechanics. Attempts to combat it should actually open up freedom and create a more dynamic story or even encourage gameplay systems that better resemble the tone of the narrative rather than developing mechanics in isolation of the story. If it is on the minds of developers and writers it would encourage developers to consider how the different pieces go together to create a certain tone in the game compared to the story they are narrating to the players during cutscenes and heavily scripted sequences.
It happened when games decided to have scripted narratives. TTRPGs and wargames and several other table top games did just fine. In fact you would be regarded poorly as a tabletop game if you did a poor job of that. Cough cough look at my avatar cough cough.
But when video games decided to have more and more scripted cutscenes something started to fall apart. Hell even old RPGs did a pretty decent job of this. Old Ultima games had some thought in how a scripted scene would work with the gameplay. Ultima 4 maybe being the first game to really think about the idea of a murder hobo being hailed as a paragon of virtue.
In short games stopped caring. For one reason or another. Now its catching back up.
This makes sense in theory, but where it starts to fall apart for me is when you change it so much that the only real relation it has is the name of the IP, or (as was the case with something like Cowboy Bebop,) you are so outwardly hostile to the fans who would recognise the IP that it renders the whole point of having that name recognition moot because the only people willing to watch your show will be the ones unaware of far superior original (and maybe a handful of hate-watchers with morbid curiosity).
Again I have to wonder how many Halo fans are watching the Halo show vs people who know the name but have never played the games vs general sci-fi fans who'll watch anything with robot suits and aliens. Presumably they crunched the numbers and they came out black but I take nothing for granted with modern executives.
The problem is it seems like when they're going through college, or maybe talking to other people in the industry, these new writers are being told that they need to put their own spin on things and turn the property they're adapting from someone else's work into one they can claim is their own. Also, they have ideas for new shows or movies, but can only do work based on established properties, so rather than wait until they're established and can pitch their own ideas, they just shove them into the current project, regardless of whether it works or not.
I know one dude who liked the first season of Halo, or at least the first few episodes, and he enjoyed it because it was a violent sci-fi story. But as you said, it's difficult to tell considering shit like Rings or Power got a second season and even when the MCU shows were faltering in 2022 due to wokeness, Disney instead doubled down until the strikes.
This makes sense in theory, but where it starts to fall apart for me is when you change it so much that the only real relation it has is the name of the IP, or (as was the case with something like Cowboy Bebop,) you are so outwardly hostile to the fans who would recognise the IP that it renders the whole point of having that name recognition moot because the only people willing to watch your show will be the ones unaware of far superior original (and maybe a handful of hate-watchers with morbid curiosity).
Again I have to wonder how many Halo fans are watching the Halo show vs people who know the name but have never played the games vs general sci-fi fans who'll watch anything with robot suits and aliens. Presumably they crunched the numbers and they came out black but I take nothing for granted with modern executives.
I agree, I remember this point being brought up with the movie world war Z which they said the only thing linking the movie and book was the title. I've not read the book, only seen the movie and apparently its completely different. I really don't understand why you would want to alienate the fanbase, but strangely in the case of Resident evil it seemed to work (the milla movies, not the recent stuff) I have a friend who will not play the games with me because he says they are too scary (yes, we are talking the boxy pixel ps1 games, too scary for him) but loves the movies and got the box set. I hate the movies (despite liking Milla's other films) but love the games. So Capcom stretched their one franchise to appeal to different people in that one instance. But I get that, its horror, which has a smaller audience but still - Its a shame because I would love some great RE live action stuff, again I ended up watching all (7-8 I cant remember) episodes of the awful Racoon City Netflix show. That was a slog. My only conclusion is the same as the lecturer told us-most of these companies dont care about appealing to fans if they think they can grab a bigger audience.
But the Halo one is strange. Not seen the Halo show but pretty mixed reviews suggest its medicore-fans on the whole hate it but "normies" aka non fans think its ok (including my neighbors who were telling me about it). But again I also don't get the logic because, from what I have heard of Halo, its one of the more easier games to adapt and apparently has some pretty great lore so at least with that going out of their way to mess up the lore and story is baffling and a wasted opportunity. I did get quite a few chuckles out of the "master cheeks" memes going around though. My guess was that the people working on it didnt do research and didnt want to (like those who worked on the Max Payne movie who actually bragged about not playing the games at all) they just see a quick buck to be made.
I agree, I remember this point being brought up with the movie world war Z which they said the only thing linking the movie and book was the title. I've not read the book, only seen the movie and apparently its completely different.
I've read the book but not seen the movie, and to be honest I really don't see how they could adapt the book, because it's written in diary format from the perspective of dozens of different survivors; there's no connecting narrative besides 'zombies'.
It could have worked really well as either a mini-series or anthology film with a bunch of directors each adapting one of the stories as a short vignette, but it seems for the actual film they pulled a Blade Runner and just wanted the cool title.
I really don't understand why you would want to alienate the fanbase, but strangely in the case of Resident evil it seemed to work (the milla movies, not the recent stuff)
The RE films are a bizarre anomaly, given their massive success. I think maybe they got away with it because they established from the start it was going to be their own story with the central Alice character, and just having nods to the games. Apocalypse seemed to be an experiment with having Nemesis and relatively game-accurate Jill Valentine, but I guess it didn't work out because then they went back to basically making Romero movies until Wesker turns up and starts doing his RE5 shit for some reason.
Genuinely one of the most mysterious franchises ever made. Probably helps that horror is one of the easiest genres to spin a consistently profitable franchise out of.
My guess was that the people working on it didnt do research and didnt want to (like those who worked on the Max Payne movie who actually bragged about not playing the games at all) they just see a quick buck to be made.
Funny you should mention, because the writers for Halo also bragged about deliberately avoiding learning anything about the games, although they did apparently learn about the characters and universe, which to me sounds like they knew Master Chief and The Covenant were a thing and then busked it from there.
The whole thing feels like Pyramid Head's contractual appearance in every piece of Silent Hill media since 2, even though his presence outside of James' story makes absolutely no sense.
I've read the book but not seen the movie, and to be honest I really don't see how they could adapt the book, because it's written in diary format from the perspective of dozens of different survivors; there's no connecting narrative besides 'zombies'.
It could have worked really well as either a mini-series or anthology film with a bunch of directors each adapting one of the stories as a short vignette, but it seems for the actual film they pulled a Blade Runner and just wanted the cool title.
The big difference is Blade Runner was at least a good film itself with some loose connections to the themes and ideas. WWZ the Movie sees Brad Pitt inject himself with Cancer because the zombies actively avoid people with terminal diseases.
The big difference is Blade Runner was at least a good film itself with some loose connections to the themes and ideas. WWZ the Movie sees Brad Pitt inject himself with Cancer because the zombies actively avoid people with terminal diseases.
I think Blade Runner is a particularly interesting example, given that they took the title of a book and attached it to an adaptation of a completely different book, albeit a loose one, instead of an original story
I think Blade Runner is a particularly interesting example, given that they took the title of a book and attached it to an adaptation of a completely different book, albeit a loose one, instead of an original story
Yeah, it gets even more fucky wucky when you read Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep and realise the movie only really adapts the plotline about exterminating replicants, almost everything else is changed.
Not that I am for one minute sorry that Ridley Scott didn't devote an hour of the movie to discussing the finer points of financing a pet goat.
Yeah, it gets even more fucky wucky when you read Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep and realise the movie only really adapts the plotline about exterminating replicants, almost everything else is changed.
Not that I am for one minute sorry that Ridley Scott didn't devote an hour of the movie to discussing the finer points of financing a pet goat.
Yeah... Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book, but it was definitely an odd one. Philip K Dick has some fantastic stories but they can also just be really fucking weird.
Yeah, it gets even more fucky wucky when you read Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep and realise the movie only really adapts the plotline about exterminating replicants, almost everything else is changed.
Not that I am for one minute sorry that Ridley Scott didn't devote an hour of the movie to discussing the finer points of financing a pet goat.
Yeah... Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book, but it was definitely an odd one. Philip K Dick has some fantastic stories but they can also just be really fucking weird.
I really wasn't a fan of the book. There were elements I really liked, like the whole fake police station bit and the big reveal with the talkshow host, and the ending was kind of obscure and weird, but overall it was such a dry read, and I genuinely wanted to shoot myself getting through all that shit with the pet shop.
I'm glad Jim is so boring we're now branching off into book reviews, on top of film and TV.
@Oliver-Onions (sorry I cant quote for some reason) I heard the same thing about Dracula, I must read that sometime. I think the RE films would have been fine if they had not brought in characters from the game and had it as its own story with Alice. Bringing in the characters from the game just messed things up imo. Just like with Loki I think its because Pyramid head became more popular than imagined (and yeah, I wont go into the weird everyone having the hots for him, I really dont understand that) but yeah doesnt make sense outside of James.
Another Jim Review, this time on Another Crab's Treasure [a]. He gave it a 7.5/10. Metacritic gives it a score of 79, no user reviews. 98% on Steam. This is another review of a review I will need to do later.
So a quick update from that post, at the time of writing Another Crab's Treasure has the Metacritic score unchanged, but the user score is 7.5 now and Steam dropped to 94%. I mention these things normally, so I figured I would here.
Jim's Shit Review said:
We’re at a point where Soulslikes really need to start differentiating themselves from the pack of medieval wasteland adventures. Much as I love them, unless they’re of standout quality, I’m likely not to notice yet more bleak mimicry of From Software’s entire aesthetic.
If any kind of game has crabs in it though, it’s guaranteed to automatically have my full attention.
So he starts with a statement I don't agree with, simply because the majority of Soulslikes I have played that aren't from From Software don't meet that description. That said, I also disagree with the implication that Lord of the Fallen (2023) (which Jim gave a 8.5 and I will not be reviewing this review) is anything "standout" other than "standout in how they made the same thing twice and it is still shit".
That said, I see a game where I play as a crab and I am at least a bit interested, so he did follow it up with something I can partially agree with! Oh shit... Is this going to be a review that I agree with and therefore can't shit on? Or will this be the start of a pattern of flipping between agreement and disagreement. Luckily, I haven't played this game also, but it is on my wishlist so lets see if Jim will keep it there.
Another Crab’s Treasure is a colorful, spirited, satirical adventure about a socially isolated crab and the perils of undersea gentrification. With a witty script and a cast of fun characters in a world that isn’t a desolate husk, it does a lot to stick out on a smaller scale.
It’s not quite a diamond but it’s certainly in the rough, a game that’s hard to dislike while nonetheless beset by a notable number of flaws that hold it back from the potential that’s clearly there.
Jim is showing a certain bias he has here, one for colourful worlds and bright settings and games. This is fine, but I know that alone is winning this game some points. Him calling it a story of "gentrification" is interesting to me. As I suspect he means it in the leftist idea, IE, "rich people stealing from poor people directly", and not in its actual meaning which is "the improvement of infrastructure and quality of life in an area and then that encouraging wealthier people to move into it which causes an average increase in cost of living which results in the poor being priced out of a neighbourhood". However, that is far too complicated of an issue for someone like Jimbo to understand, so I am sure the story is actually a reposed shell or something.
It is interesting how high of a score he gave this if this is "not quite a diamond" as he put it. Though, it seems like this game is overall something he liked, even if it isn't perfect in everywhere.
As a contentedly solo hermit crab trying to get back their repossessed shell, players will take up a fork and use all manner of ocean garbage to jam on their back for makeshift defense. There aren’t different weapons, but instead a large variety of “shells” with unique abilities tied to them.
Ok, just saying, I don't usually read these reviews before I review them. You get full stream of consciousness, typically, though if I have nothing to say on something I will pause on it for quite a bit and think until I move on. I point that out because I was making a joke about the repossessed shell. The fact he used it to actually mean that is hilarious to me. A lot of people think repossession is part of gentrification, that the bank or city will just take your place and kick you out to make somewhere nice. That isn't what happens. What happens is they stop letting you be behind on your mortgage payments because the neighbourhood being nicer means it will be easier for them to buy and sell your house to recoup their losses. If you live in a shittier part of town they will tolerate lateness longer simply because it makes business sense to do so as there's no way they are going to make that money back anyways so they might get something out of it if they just hound you for being behind on payments. As I said, complicated issue, and is far too messy for someone like Jim. Though it is also possible the game itself makes similar mistakes, but based on what I have seen and heard the game actually gets into the nuances of the topic a bit better, even if it is still surface level and clearly has something it wants to say.
The mechanical aspect of being a hermit crab who gets special abilities from their current piece of trash on their back is actually interesting and I can see how that could lead to some interesting gameplay. Especially if the idea is to rapidly cycle out your shells for more powerful ones as you go.
Simple melee attacks are performed with the fork, and an upgrade can unlock the ability to stab shells with it to create a temporary hammer. Defensively, the crab has access to a rather ineffective dodge and a very effective shell retraction that blocks pretty much anything.
Only one weapon is a bit disappointing to me as someone who likes weapon and move set variety, especially because it doesn't sound like there is a wide move set for the fork here, but the idea of sacrificing shells to gain a hammer might make up for that. The dodge being poor is likely so that you need to rely on your shell more often and you're mostly relying on it to try to avoid attacks as you scramble to a new shell.
Shell spells are fired off by expending charges (regained via melee attacks) and are themed to the object in question - wearing a soda can lets you fire homing bubble projectiles, while a shot glass is fragile as heck but can be used once to create jagged shards that punish enemy attacks.
There are quite a few shells with some really fun properties. Some are quite clever too, such as banana skins that can be eaten for health, or a coffee cup that provides caffeine for increased hit speed. Sadly there isn’t a unique spell for every shell, so most of what makes them stand out individually is cosmetic.
Taking damage wears down your shell, and blocking damage does so at a faster rate. Once a shell breaks, the most viable defense is gone until you stick your ass in another hole.
This at least grants some variety to the move set, and this does show shell cycling is something you should do. Shells are clearly expendable under this system, paced out only long enough to get another. Ability reuse is a bit disappointing, but that really depends on how many "classes" of shell there are for the player to use for how much variety this gives. Luckily this is an obvious place to expand in future content releases if the succuss of this game leads to any.
While I’m no fan of durability systems, Another Crab’s Treasure scatters good shells everywhere and makes sure boss arenas have plenty. As well as that, you’ll be able to purchase shell insurance to always have your favorite ones available at rest points, and there are upgrades allowing for shell repair and even a one-time fix upon breakage.
If you must do durability in a game, this is an example of doing so while still making the breakable objects feel more than disposable transitory items. Considering one of the shells is a dead crab that flops around on your back, the commitment to shell preservation is a game doing something morally right. I never want to not have a corpse flopping around on me.
Jim still has it out for durability systems. You know, he's never done a sufficient job on convincing me they should be avoided beyond the fact Jim wants easy, Jim wants convenient, and Jim hates anything that makes him have to think. Then again, Jim is an idiot and fails to even try to understand the reasons people might like what he doesn't or why systems might be in a game. I am totally just going to soap box here about durability systems because I know it pisses people like Jim off when someone can actually counter his lack of an argument by simply presenting an argument on why they should be in a game.
Let me tell you a story about my current Morrowind playthrough. I am playing a "magical barbarian" build, a huge focus on quickly buffing myself up before a fight then charging forward to beat the enemy to death while hoping I outpace the rate my buffs run out. I was fighting a few enemies and I noticed the incoming damage was seeming to increase more than expected, this was because I was suffering from being hit by damage weapon and armour effects. It got so bad I had to decide if I would retreat or scavenge some armour off the dead to finish the dungeon, and I decided I would scavenge. My weapon was also running out of durability so I was forced to take a slightly weaker axe off an enemy to preserve my own weapon incase I needed the extra power of its enchantment later. I suffered so much lost durability in this segment that I barely profited from that dungeon after paying for new repair items and the repair themselves, at one point drawing a magic spear I found despite not having many skill levels in spears just to keep pushing forward. My moment to moment gameplay was only enhanced by the fact I was forced to make a consideration of how my gear was holding up as I fought forward. It even cut into my looting as I had to decide if I would give up my proper gear or not to get more loot or if I would leave behind scavenged armour to go light for the chance at more loot, in the end I cleared the dungeon and dropped the scavenged gear to quickly loot everything I could before popping on my Recall Ring to just teleport to town and repair my stuff and sell the loot I had to come back for. Durability created an emergent situation and decisions were made and they were due to that emergent situation. I could've planned to bring more repair items, I could've went in with better repaired equipment rather than get sloppy, I could've loaded a previous save, I could've ran to town to recover abandoning that attempt at the dungeon, or I could've made do with what I found like I did. Isn't emergent gameplay one of the holy grails of game design? Why kneecap the ability for emergent situations to occur? The answer is negativity bias and a desire to simply "win". To me the negative part of the situation in that I had to curse my own arrogance, it was followed up by a fun positive situation where I got to pat myself on the back for solving the issue through a consideration of the game mechanics at my disposal, and with that came a sense of mastery over the game as I was able to come to a solution based on a knowledge of mechanics the game provides and my experience with them. All of this resulted from the simple inclusion of a durability system.
A counter argument to durability systems is the one in Oblivion, which is just bloody terrible. Durability gets burned through far too quickly and the effects of durability going down are too severe too early on. Funnily enough, the durability related damage fall off in Morrowind is theoretically more severe, as the damage multiplier in that game from durability is currentDurability / maxDurability while Oblivion makes it (currentDurability / maxDurability + 1) / 2 which should result in a slower decrease in weapon effectiveness for relative durability. Morrowind, however, made weapons have far higher durability and they degrade slower which lead to a significant difference in how the systems function as a result, this lead to it feeling like part of my planning and operating costs in Morrowind and something that was as important for caring for my survivability as treating diseases, curses, and carrying around healing items, while in Oblivion it is simply an inconvenience and a reason to toss aside old, damaged, and unwanted equipment rather than repair it or consider such a thing as an operating cost to my adventuring career. It should also note that Morrowind is a game where most of my equipment is something I made special efforts to acquire from a particular quest, location, or as a purchase and cannot easily be replaced with the loot I get off of bodies in many cases. Oblivion, on the other hand, doesn't have that feeling as in that game most of my gear was expendable leveled loot that I would dispose of in the near future regardless until I reached best in slot. Even quest rewards often suffered from these issues. In fact I would argue that, due to the way the gear and progression works in Oblivion it shouldn't have a durability system, at least not a traditional one. While Skyrim also shouldn't have a traditional durability system I once modded Skyrim to make the tempering you can do to weapons and armor to increase their stats degrade through use creating a quasi durability system and it actually made the game more enjoyable as it make my equipment something I felt I had to care for, without falling into the trap Oblivion had where the equipment became disposable due to leveled loot, which shows a more refined version of such a system might be more fitting for games with scaling loot tables.
Moving on to a more recent poor implementation of a durability system there is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom games, which frankly just suffer from durability wearing out far too fast likely to try and force a situation of rotating out weapons more frequently, but often I find myself needing more weapons to kill a group of enemies than I can scavenge from them, making it feel like I need to occasionally do the tedious thing of just stopping to gather weapons until the late game solves this issue by simply spawning frequent high durability and high damage weapons. This probably could've been fixed with a more gradual curve in durability as better gear begins spawning and the removal of the enemy's HP scaling up as your weapons did due to the way that game's secret leveling system functions. For a recent game with a durability system I liked, Outward. A game that has a very gradual rate that durability punishes you, but once it does it is immediate and distinctly felt. Repairs are part of your regular preparation and you can also pay for mass repairs as well. I will point out it does have issues still, such as the percentage based durability cost of using active abilities and the durability cost tuning being very out of whack in some places, but over all it services the game by further cementing the feeling of preparation and planning being the main advantage you get rather than simply personal power.
This seems to be the review that is letting me talk about actually complex issues that Jim will never give nearly enough thought to. Durability systems, how they affect the game they are in, how they are implemented, and if they should or shouldn't be implemented is actually one of the more complicated discussions you can have about game design. Sadly these days they are mostly restricted to survival games which add them without thought because "survival games have durability systems". It just really annoys me when Jim so pigheadedly tries to insist certain things are good or bad and wants to stifle the creativity of an entire medium in the process.
While lots of fun in a less-than-polished sense, moments of “difficulty” come off more cheap than challenging, largely as a result of troll-quality enemy placement . Crustacean fuckers (in all senses of the term) are constantly positioned on ledges explicitly to jab you as you try to pull off platforming, or they're otherwise littering the landscape with terrifyingly ranged projectile attacks.
This is something I feel is a common problem with several Souls-like games, and also certain segments of Dark Souls 2 and even Demon Souls also suffered from this issue. The difficulty felt cheap rather than challenging. From Software managed to avoid this as time went on ever better, but a lot of other games are just screaming "Prepare to Die" while trying to be hardcore through cheap deaths or bloated number values rather than engaging difficulty.
The speed of some enemies, particularly the aggressive bosses, can feel a touch too fast relative to the player character’s slower response times. Between these issues and the ambushes, at times I didn’t feel guilty for going into the accessibility options to activate the gun shell and one-shot my way through certain areas.
Accessibility options are great here overall and include a few life quality features that honestly just make the game better - chiefly, increased shell health and a bigger invincibility window while dodging to make evasion worth attempting. Alongside a suite of other options, Another Crab’s Treasure does a laudable job of proving a Soulslike can be accessible and enjoyable.
Jim, just fucking 41%. You and LKD both. I am so fucking sick of calling difficulty an accessibility issue. It isn't. It is you being a lazy worthless hack who wants a fucking win button. This pisses me right the fuck off. Others have chimed in on this shit and how difficulty options aren't accessibility options. In fact, one second let me toss their quotes in here really fast so they can get all the credit for saying it first, as really I would just be repeating what they are saying before I get to why I get pissed off.
I have no issue with games adding difficulty options for filthy casuals like Jim but calling it an 'accessibility option' is plain dishonest and insulting. Calling what has always been considered difficulty as 'accessibility' is such a scummy way to deflect rightful criticism of someone wanting a game to cater to their skill level, and only hurts genuine efforts to promote real accessibility options in games.
My question is always where does this line of thinking end? Should you be given access to the debug tools in order to max out every single stat and make yourself effectively invincible? If yes, then what's even the point of playing the game when there are zero loss conditions? You may as well watch a Let's Play at that point.
I've mentioned before that Souls fans are insufferable twats because they refuse to hear any criticism against their precious games, and I do think there's a middle-ground the reasonable among us could agree to --the Stakes of Marika in Elden Ring are a great example of an 'easy mode' without compromising the core game design-- but Jim is the opposite side of this obnoxious coin.
He's not willing to make any effort to learn a game's systems. If it doesn't hold his hand every step of the way then it's not being inclusive, as if every game has to appeal to every player. I cannot imagine being this childish and entitled.
What they said, just again. Also, why the fuck are we constantly hearing from the accessibility options people how we need to push for the creative vision of hacks that make barely interactive Hold W Simulators (because guess fucking what you fucking journalistic retarded twats, people have made actual Walking Simulators that are real games so even that term has a place where something legitimately interactive can exist meaning the trash you worship needs to be granted an even more insulting term to account for that) yet if that creative vision includes difficulty they start whining about it and call the devs every awful thing under the sun and try to counter anyone pointing out their hypocrisy by using a whiny mocking tone to say "muh creative vision". Let fucking game devs make the fucking games they want to and if it isn't for you get the fuck out of our corner of the hobby you fucking lazy hacks rather than demand we change everything to include you. After all isn't that what you tell us? The hypocrisy pisses me off, but I am mostly playing up how much that pisses me off because the thing I actually get heated about is next.
As it has also been pointed out this shit is insulting and gets in the way of real accessibility options and innovations. Do you want to see what actual fucking accessibility looks like? It isn't making the game easier. It is working on fucking hardware like even the mediocre but still better than nothing attempts by Microsoft or even things like we can see here which people who actually care and actually want to make gaming fucking accessible do even if it isn't there yet. It is also shit like letting me slow down fucking dialog so I can read through my fucking dyslexia. It is UI and level design that doesn't rely entirely on fucking colour so that people who have colour blindness aren't randomly fucked over by a suddenly impossible for them puzzle or mechanic. It is having fucking subtitles for the deaf. It is offering multiple fonts and sizes so people with dyslexia can customize it to what is easiest for them to read because a universal dyslexia friendly font does not exist. It is the ability to enable a solid contrasting background to read the subtitles against. It is allowing users to turn down certain bits of pointless visual effects, noises, and flashing so they don't get sensory overload when they have certain autistic disorders.
You fuckers don't want accessibility, you want to be lazy and to use other people as your shield. Jim and Laura, because I know he gets this shit from Laura Kate Dale, you should both kill yourselves. Unironically. You'd make the world a better place if you offed yourselves and weren't trying to use disability as a shield to force video games to appeal to your personal subjective tastes and interests and thus creating an air of hostility and drawing attention away from real actual accessibility options. Yes this is something I actually care about. Yes I am fucking MATI. . There. Done. Gave myself a fucking hat. I generally play up my reactions to Jim's shit. I generally play up how much I care about what he says and make mountains out of molehills because it is fun and I don't actually give a fuck about Jim's shit option. This though, this is an issue I genuinely care about and that genuinely has me pissed off. This is something Jim's and Laura's handling of and influence, because as much as we want to fucking laugh at them they do still have a degree of influence both personally and through their peers, can do real harm to something actually good happening in the world. If you care about video games as a medium, do not neglect accessibility options. Learn what actual accessibility is. Point out to developers when they could make simple changes to their UI to make it more accessible. I am not asking for dedicated accessibility consultants, because most of them keep fucking over people with disabilities due to their lack of understanding of the disabilities they are consulting for, but some of the simple stuff I pointed out above could be some of the first places we can look to make gaming truly more welcoming, inclusive, and accessible. Not every game should be for every player, but every player should be able to find out if a game is for them. I'll get off my second soapbox of the review review and move on.
I will actually address the mechanics seen here, as these are what I think are the best form of difficulty options. I don't think difficulty presets will ever be as good as customizable difficulty settings letting you tailor the experience to your liking. I just believe that developers should include presets to allow you to play on the "intended" settings, as well as one that turns on all the increased difficulty options and one that turns on all the decreased difficulty options. Maybe a fourth setting where they put it on what they view as their own personal recommended "hard mode" if that differs from the previously mentioned settings.
Back to Jim's Shit Review said:
Oh, and if you think the gun is cheap? Don’t use it. Simple as that.
One last fuck you to Jim before I get to the next topic. If you think Microtransactions are exploitative, don't buy them. Simple as that. If you think something is racist, transphobic, homophobic, or some other bullshit evil, don't buy/watch/play/read/whatever it. Simple as that.
We both fucking know you're only saying this to try to get the people who have legitimate complaints about how something like this cheapens the game overall as a way to tell them to not talk about it. So why do you insist on talking about things that bother you? You and your ilk are just as bad, but in your eyes your problems "are important and matter" because you're "the right people". Go fuck yourself. The thing that pisses me off the most is for the most part I do agree that trans, gay, racial, and human rights are important. I am actually very left leaning in my politics. Despite that I publicly have made myself an known enemy to all of these leftist movements because you fuckers are a disease that only exist to divide people more, not make the world a more welcoming and open place. No one was being kept out of nerdy spaces until you and your kind showed up. It used to be that if someone wasn't feeling a certain game we'd try to find them a game they would like, unlike people like Jim who decide to try and make things change to suit them instead. Ah shit, my righteous political anger is still going. Time to give me this one too . Right, moving on for real.
ACT’s biggest problem is all of its aforementioned jank, which is slightly worse than, say, the kind of game you’d expect Focus Home Entertainment to publish. Locking onto enemies frequently risks placing the camera behind walls, while walls and floors both have moments of incorporeality that may see a player clip through surfaces and take fall damage.
Little flaws of this nature are a consistent issue, none of it enough to ever break the game, but present enough to give the whole thing a generally unpolished feel. The somewhat basic graphics don’t help, though it must be said character designs and inventive atmospheric visuals do a great job of ensuring it’s still a pleasant game to look at.
This, luckily, is the type of thing that can and likely will get polished out in patching as this game seems to have done well. Focus Home Entertainment, however, is a company I actually associate with pretty severe jank as much as I do like them. Interesting comparison though, as I would put them firmly in the A/AA space and this game appears to be entirely indie so that means Jim is suggesting this game is of comparable quality to them, if just a little behind. That there is actually an endorsement that will keep this game on my wishlist, just to see if I will share that opinion. Also, from the screenshots, I wouldn't say the graphics are basic so much as they seem very deliberately stylized and the basic appearance isn't so much a lack of polish, but deliberate. Sure it is simple looking, but there's plenty of implied detail even if there is minimal cluttering on the screen. I actually quite like the way the game looks even if the polygon count is a little low and it needs a bit more antialiasing.
Although far from the highest quality Soulslike, Another Crab’s Treasure is an original, intensely likable one. Its sharp script is backed up with a fun gameplay conceit, wrapped up in a package with a whole lot of character. We did the whole review without a shell pun either, so that's also a positive point!
Jim's final signoff on this game is positive. Though I find that first sentence of this paragraph a bit awkward, like there's a word missing in there somewhere. And yes, I too managed to avoid the shell puns Jim. Mostly because you'd really need to be stretching to make any with anything you said and left me no openings. Though I think I will ruin that right now by calling your statements about accessibility options, which in this case are actually. Once again Jim's review suffers from being too short and not going into enough details. It feels very surface level, and honestly the biggest thing that won me over to a game I already had interest in here was the comparison to Focus Home Entertainment. Nothing else was even remotely useful to me in deciding if I wanted to keep this game on my wishlist or not as Jim simply refused to say enough about any of it. It is also the first review of his that I have reviewed of his to get an actual emotional response out of me. Honestly, I just want to get to the next review where I can laugh at Jim for being a over sexual pervert and a cuck who will still act like a puritan twat in an attempt to get outrage and clicks. Though he might surprise me when I do a review review for Stellar Blade.
Double posting because this is something that actually needs to be separated from the above Review Review as it is news for the thread. If a mod gets grumpy feel free to merge. I won't be offended. Just call me a double posting faggot when you make the mod edit otherwise I'll be sad. New Jim Review on Puppet Master: The Game [a], Jim gave it a 3/10 and is currently the only review at all on Metacritic. Steam is giving it a 86%. Something of note is that Jim does actually have comments on his site and people are damning this game, which is Free to Play, for having cosmetic microtransactions and paid content. Something tells me people only know this because Jim mentioned it. Also the devs apparently were in the comments and look like they might be a bit of a joke themselves. Though I am questioning that claim currently as the comments are a fucking shitshow and I half suspect these are trolls or something, and Jim's fans are always toxic. Here, I'll leave this as some fun to see what is going on down there. I normally don't point at his comments on his reviews, but I figured I'd mention them here because of how hostile they are.
Double posting because this is something that actually needs to be separated from the above Review Review as it is news for the thread. If a mod gets grumpy feel free to merge. I won't be offended. Just call me a double posting faggot when you make the mod edit otherwise I'll be sad. New Jim Review on Puppet Master: The Game [a], Jim gave it a 3/10 and is currently the only review at all on Metacritic. Steam is giving it a 86%. Something of note is that Jim does actually have comments on his site and people are damning this game, which is Free to Play, for having cosmetic microtransactions and paid content. Something tells me people only know this because Jim mentioned it. Also the devs apparently were in the comments and look like they might be a bit of a joke themselves. Though I am questioning that claim currently as the comments are a fucking shitshow and I half suspect these are trolls or something, and Jim's fans are always toxic. Here, I'll leave this as some fun to see what is going on down there. I normally don't point at his comments on his reviews, but I figured I'd mention them here because of how hostile they are. View attachment 5976879
Lets play a game shall we, in Jim's own words the cosmetic mictransactions are "overpriced cosmetic DLC" so how much do you reckon they're charging for them?
. There. Done. Gave myself a fucking hat. I generally play up my reactions to Jim's shit. I generally play up how much I care about what he says and make mountains out of molehills because it is fun and I don't actually give a fuck about Jim's shit option. This though, this is an issue I genuinely care about and that genuinely has me pissed off. This is something Jim's and Laura's handling of and influence, because as much as we want to fucking laugh at them they do still have a degree of influence both personally and through their peers, can do real harm to something actually good happening in the world. If you care about video games as a medium, do not neglect accessibility options. Learn what actual accessibility is. Point out to developers when they could make simple changes to their UI to make it more accessible. I am not asking for dedicated accessibility consultants, because most of them keep fucking over people with disabilities due to their lack of understanding of the disabilities they are consulting for, but some of the simple stuff I pointed out above could be some of the first places we can look to make gaming truly more welcoming, inclusive, and accessible. Not every game should be for every player, but every player should be able to find out if a game is for them. I'll get off my second soapbox of the review review and move on.
