April Fools: How You Can't Trust Anyone
Posted on Sunday, April 1 2012 @ 06:34:01 Eastern

            April Fools Day. It is a time that comes about once a year, yet it is that point in time that I dread to endure like those times you have to put up with that uncle every Thanksgiving that you don’t really give a **** about due to his drinking problems but you smile and nod along just to look like you’re a part of the family. I may sound like an old man for complaining about a “holiday” that lets you have harmless fun on your unsuspecting victims, but I am here to talk about how people take an advantage of it within the gaming field and fail horribly at it.
            For starters, April Fools somehow turns everyone into a compulsive, lying bastard. Even the timid kid at school gets in on this as you are left to wonder who ISN’T  a lying douchebag on April 1st. This is the only time of the year where you have a legitimate reason to be paranoid of people because you don’t know who is actually lying to your face and who is telling the truth. For gaming, this is just as bad. People who don’t know jack about the gaming industry suddenly have a surge of “sources” that tell them bullshit like how Final Fantasy VII is truly having a remake or that Half-Life 2: Episode 3 has a release date. Not only that, but those kinds of people just make the joke way too obvious. Even if you were to call people out on this, they’ll just laugh and give the half hearted excuse that it’s April Fools.
            Gaming journalists aren’t immune to the “douchebag for a day” syndrome and some were known to make up stuff in the gaming news with varying degrees of success. EGM, back when they were still in business, had made an edited image of a screenshot from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker by replacing Link and a bird enemy with their Twilight Princess models and said people that pre-ordered Twilight Princess would get a copy of Wind Waker with the “updated” visuals. I believed it at first until I was told by a friend that the image was a fake and I realized I should have known better. However, others weren’t as smart and actually went to their local Gamestop to pre-order and found out it was all just a hoax. April Fools for the gaming world just tugs at the hope strings of gamers everywhere while the rest of us have to preemptively dismiss any and all gaming news on April 1st until April 2nd rolls around so that people realize the time to be a lying ass hole is over.
            In short, don’t use April Fools as an excuse to be a liar. After all, if you are using a certain day of the year to be playing pranks and lying out of your ass, what is stopping you from doing it at any other time? Hmm, maybe I am onto something there…

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Be Positive: Why Being Negative Sucks as a Gamer
Posted on Wednesday, January 4 2012 @ 06:57:58 Eastern



In today’s times, there is not a lot to be happy about. Sure, Osama Bin Laden is dead, but our economy is still in the **** hole, businesses are weary on who they will hire next and how many, the President of the United States is pretty much faffing about on the more serious issues, and the wealthiest CEOs are just making more money and sitting on it with their big fat ass. Of course, not everything is doom and gloom. Maybe you got lucky and found a $5 bill under your couch. Maybe you scored a coupon to get a free pack of fries at your fast food joint. No matter how small things are, anything that is positive is worth embracing.

If you are like me or anyone else that plays video games regularly, you play a game to get away from life’s problems and stresses (unless you drink instead or do drugs) and play to unwind and have fun. After all, nothing feels more satisfying than blasting zombies in the face with a shotgun or casting a powerful magic spell that nukes everything in front of you. Heck, if you grew up on video games, then you know that feeling you get when you get a new game and wonder what the next secret is or what the next level has in store for you. When you hear about another video game coming out in the future, you and your friends would envision how that game would be, hyping yourself up silly because you want that game, damnnit, and you want it now.



Video games have evolved and come a long way. Our perception and opinions in video games have changed as well, but it may not be for the better. While most people have a more developed intellect and have a sharper eye in finding flaws, we have leaned too far in the direction of a critic. Obviously, mindlessly praising a game does nothing but paint you as a blind fanboy, but we are developing a culture where blasting someone’s skills or a piece of work without holding back is becoming the norm. Video game reviews are leaning more towards nitpicking every single flaw instead of talking about the good bits while video game fans themselves seem to be physically allergic to saying anything positive about a game or console. Go on a video game forum and try to discuss all the positive points of the Wii or Super Smash Bros. Brawl. At least one in every two replies will be in the form of attacking the original poster or blasting the game/console for all of its flaws. When has it become acceptable to be so negative on everything?

Fanboys are part of the problem for sure and they will always be around. As long as there’s something to be opposed to, you can expect people to never say anything positive about the competition. After all, you don’t want to be caught investing in something that the majority doesn’t like and be made fun of for it. What really inflates the problem of people being negative and overly critical is the mainstream media glorifying people that make a living in being this way. Anne Robinson from the Weakest Link, Simon Cowell from American Idol, and Gordon Ramsay from Hell’s Kitchen are a few examples of overly harsh critics and deadpan snarkers that people seem to love and come back for more. Society has practically grown so used to this type of persona that people crave for more as they watch a contestant get torn down to a crying pile of shame as they are told they are the worst singer ever and have heard better from a donkey. Society loves to watch other people squirm as long as it is not them because after all, we don’t care what happens as long as it doesn’t affect us. Yes, we have become that apathetic, but that is for a different discussion.



Internet media has also fallen into the same trap. We have people that make money or fame from being a heartless dick because we all find it funny. People like Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation and James Rolfe as the Angry Video Game Nerd are praised for tearing a game to shreds and saying how much of a piece a **** the games are, but that is not the worst part. The worst part is people taking what those guys are saying as divine truth; even though the characters are grossly exaggerating the flaws they point out and they do enjoy some things in games but are not paid to talk about it unless the said good bits are huge. Even your generic video game forum has groups of people that would rather talk about how much game X or console Y sucks and anyone that says otherwise is a blind fanboy that wouldn’t know a good game if it bit them in the ass. Even if a game is generally liked by the public, you can expect the more diehard fans to endlessly ***** and moan about every single glitch that has yet to be fixed (no matter how minor the said bugs are) or how the textures aren’t sharp enough. Gamers in general have become nothing but pissants that take every opportunity they can get to slam a game’s flaws, then do it some more when a sequel comes out or if the glitches do get fixed. It is a bit ironic that people are willing to spend a ton of energy complaining about a game, movie, or book and either keep coming back to them instead of avoiding them or can’t muster the energy to simply ignore the works that they do not like.

Know what I say to all that? Fuck being a Yahtzee wannabe. It’s so damn easy to endlessly whine about something that is imperfect but I want you all to do something for every game you have played; name at least 5 good bits in a game that makes it worth playing. Remind yourself what got you to play a particular game. Remind yourself why you keep coming back to play a game some more. If we can start thinking more positively, it can become possible to actually be able to enjoy playing video games again and break out of the stereotype of going into forums to ***** about something we never played or hardly played or spent too much time looking for flaws.

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What Happened to Video Game Cheats?
Posted on Monday, May 9 2011 @ 09:33:09 Eastern

In the old days of video games, cheats weren't exactly in your face but once it was known a game had a cheat inside, you would probably try everything else in your power to see if there were other cheats you can fiddle around with. Unlock all characters, level select, infinite lives, sound test, and so much more were up for grabs. Whether cheats were obtained by entering a button code or doing something such as 100% completion, many kids and teens were excited to see what they could unlock. On top of these, you have exploits that weren't intended but can make the game even more wacky and fun.Times have changed and time has not been so kind to video game cheats. What happened to cheats? What happened to the fun stuff that made us come back for more to keep playing?


First, let's talk about what happened to the cheats and what changed them. For a good portion of games, gone are the days where you can have invincibility, infinite lives, or unlocking extra levels. For the most part, games nowadays already have a level select feature that grows as you complete more levels. Lives are pretty much a thing of the past and are exchanged for a more generic health/armor meter. Things like infinite ammo/power ups/health are dwindling in exchange for alternate costumes/skins, artwork, and mainly achievements. Why are these unlockables more common? With more and more games focusing on online multiplayer, many developers feel the replay value lies in there instead of single player and make any unlockables be nothing more than bragging rights and this holds especially true for achievements that you can show off to everyone. With more games focusing with online content, there's no incentive to make hidden content that can make the game too crazy, which can make games unfair for some in a multiplayer setting. A problem with make unlockables be more focused on cosmetics is people can easily show it off on YouTube, making it pointless to see what the next outfit or artwork is in game when you can just do a search online.


Next, why are cheats being pushed to the side completely? Despite video game companies having larger budgets now than they did in the past, most of the budget is focused on making the game look good and making sure the game works properly. With these factors and time being a big constraint, the last thing developers want to do is to test cheats to make sure they don't break the game. Video games are becoming more and more like movies where players only remember the games for the experience while they played and then never pick up the game again unless they want to play again for nostalgia's sake. Games are also being made to cut down on many possible exploits as possible, forcing players to play the way the developers want them to. Ask anyone who played and completed Super Metroid and the majority of them will tell you about the final battle between Samus and Mother brain, but another chunk of the fan base would tell you about how they used the wall jump technique to reach areas they didn't think they could get to or talk about the weird effects they gotten when they messed around with power up combinations. It's no surprise when players got upset that Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion forced players to stick to the path that the developers intended.


There's really no excuse on why cheats and such can't be used the way they were back then. Not every multiplayer game will have their severs running forever and not everyone will want to keep playing multiplayer. Let's take a look at the Streets of Rage Remake. Except for hidden characters, players can immediately see what cheats and features they can unlock and what they do. Not only this gets the player excited to unlock them but they can choose which ones they want to unlock first, which gets the player to replay the game over and over to rack up points needed to get these cheats. By showing the player what they can unlock, it gives them the incentive to keep playing instead of the player wondering what they can unlock, get it, and then get upset that the content sucks.


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Why a zombie outbreak would suck
Posted on Wednesday, January 19 2011 @ 08:05:25 Eastern

            A zombie invasion is every nerd’s wet dream where they don’t have to listen to the law, loot all they want, get people to listen to them if they want to survive, and blow ...   read more...

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All for me, myself, and I! The killer of co-op games
Posted on Monday, August 2 2010 @ 08:56:48 Eastern

Co-op. It’s an abbreviation of cooperate or cooperation. Video games use co-op as a selling point because who wouldn’t enjoy slaying hordes of monsters with several friends watching your backs? Games like Left 4 Dead, Alien Swarm, World o...   read more...

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"It's free and I'd like to see you do better!" The common cry against critique with game mods/reviews
Posted on Monday, May 24 2010 @ 16:35:50 Eastern

Criticism is a fickle thing. Sometimes it is something we need and other times we just don’t want to deal with it. In any form of media, criticism will always be there, but there are some who believe it’s an evil t...   read more...

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Expansion Pack VS Sequels: Are They One and the Same?
Posted on Sunday, April 18 2010 @ 14:17:56 Eastern

Whenever a great game came out and you played it for hours and hours on end, you and your friends would hope the developer would make a sequel to your favorite game. After all, who didn't want a sequel to Super Smas...   read more...

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Social Gaming: People You hate to Play With
Posted on Thursday, January 28 2010 @ 16:02:44 Eastern

          It comes as no surprise when I say we human beings have become total dick bananas when it comes to being civil to each other. Selfish, self righteous and greedy are ju...   read more...

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Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott: The History and Its Downfall
Posted on Tuesday, October 27 2009 @ 11:42:24 Eastern

Back in June, Valve presented a trailer showing Left 4 Dead 2, the sequel to the ever popular Left 4 Dead. Naturally, you'd assume that the fans would be extremely excited to see a sequel. Only problem was that the sequel was announced to be relea...   read more...

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Fan ideas: What seperates them from the professionals
Posted on Wednesday, June 10 2009 @ 09:31:04 Eastern

            Ideas. Everyone has them, but only a few can execute them properly. In the video game fandom, ideas thrive and grow and they mature into the games t...   read more...

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