Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Brief Thoughts

It's easily the best game in the series since a Crack in Time. The shooting and combat has never felt any better and it has the best shotgun I used in a long while. Platfoming and shooting all feel really fined tuned. The story is decent, but nothing special, the series never had super amazing writing but this game's story is functional unlike the 2016 game which I enjoyed but had a story that just sucks. This game is probably my favorite game in the series in terms of gameplay, sure the lack of exploration is kind of a bummer but usually games tend to either excel at exploration or combat, rarely if ever do they succeed at doing both well. Insomniac proving why they are still my favorite devs after all these years.

Hunter X Hunter Prequel

 

Hunter X Hunter Prequel

The story starts off a while before the series actually begins. Two nations are at war with each other one fighting for freedom and the other fighting for tyranny. The story starts off with two best friends who live in a village that is in the forest and is neutral. One's name is Ging Freeces and the other Crowley Crucifixion. One believes in the side of freedom which is Ging and the other believes in tyranny which is Crowley, and loves to fight and loves the thrill of battle. They are both friends because they both enjoy fighting and testing each other's limits, they respect each other's fighting prowess despite being different ideologically. One day the princess from the kingdom that believes in Freedom comes by to try to convince Ging and Crowley and the other villagers to join the cause against tyranny. The village elder declines and wants no part in the war, she leaves while Crowley and Ging go to find food and supplies when the princess gets attacks by bandits, Ging and Crowley rescues her and after the fight, Crowley decides to join the war because he enjoyed fighting those bandits and the thrill of being in danger but he justifies his bloodlust by saying, "evil is a cancer and must be punished". Ging goes along because he was bored wanted to stop living a sheltered life and wants to keep his friend from going down a dark path because he doesn't buy Crowley's words but he cares for him. They both ask the village elder and both are exiled to never step foot again. Crowley doesn't care while Ging questions if this is the right idea. They later join the Kingdom fighting for Freedom and they train under a younger Netero with Nen training. It's a type of ability that Netero is now starting to deploy in fights. Ging and Crowley excel at their training while the latter being the better of the two but has a bloodlust if left unchecked could lead him into ruin, Ging has a better judge of character and know when a fight is over and doesn't exert himself. No one else is good at nen besides them. Netero doesn't want to go into battle in the risk of getting captured and then revealing the secrets of Nen. Years pass by and Ging and Crowley are both winning battle after battle. Crowley is enjoying the killing while Ging has enough and wants the war to end. Crowley and the Princess slowly develop a romantic relationship, Crowley often likes to be comforted by the Princess after a long battle, and the Princess admires Crowley's conviction and battle feats, they later have a child together and get married. The child's name is Chrollo. Time goes on, and the war is almost over but Crowley wants to do more killing and enjoying the thrill of battle, the King is getting tired of Crowley's bloodlust, and pestering for fights and if he steps out of line, he will exile him and worst case scenario: kill him. The Princess is liking him less and less and forms a relationship with Ging. Ging is getting sick and tired of it all. Crowley wants the war to last longer, so he secretly leaves the palace and takes his son with him, everyone in the Kingdom tries to find Crowley and his son, and during the final battle that was supposed to end the war Ging and the final battle starts, but then Crowley shows up and Ging is in shock and won't bring himself to fight him. Crowley wipes out the entire Freedom Kingdom's army and Ging holds back while getting beat up in the fight. Ging then runs away and heads back to the Kingdom, he knows Crowley will wipe out everyone in the palace soon and he asks Netero to hold off Crowley while everyone in the kingdom gets evacuated including the King. Crowley shows up and him and Netero fight. Crowley and him are evenly matched, but then the king and hundreds of people die in the crossfire. Netero than tires Crowley out, enough for him, Ging, a few people and the Princess to escape. They escape to a mountain pass that is hard to find and far away from the Kingdom of Tyranny. It's been weeks and the Princess is a few days pregnant and keeps it a secret from Ging and she wants to kill Crowley for killing her father and destroying her kingdom and wants her other son back, while also wants her unborn son to have a good life. Ging thinks it's stupid and he knows he can't beat Crowley and Netero can only fight him to stalemate plus Ging can't bring himself to fight Crowley. Netero then talks to Ging and tells him that he is going to have to get over his friendship with Crowley and he will have to kill him in order for Ging to live a life without fear. Crowley won't stop until Ging is dead because of his bloodlust. Ging thinks about this long and hard and then he decides to go to the Kingdom of Tyranny to fight Crowley, they head there and are attacked by his guard and Netero fends him off. Ging and the Princess head to the throne room where Crowley is and he takes over as king, a young Chrollo, Phinks and Phaeton are there, they ask to help but Crowley refuses because he wants to kill Ging to finally get rid of him because he was tired of his self righteousness and how he killed people despite claiming to do it for a greater good, Crowley admits that he only joined the Kingdom of Freedom because he wanted the glory of battle and wanted out of that village, everything he did was to sustain his craving for the fight. Ging pleads Crowley to stop his killing and be his friend again but Crowley starts attacking violently and tells him to stop denying his nature Nen was meant to be a weapon for murder, Ging refuses to fight but then the Princess tries to kill Crowley and is hit by a fatal wound. Ging then gets angry and finally starts taking the fight seriously, Ging is still losing, then after the fight goes on Ging notices an opening in Crowley's attacks because of how much he is enjoying the fight and Ging attacks him there, he kills Crowley and then runs away with the Princess, Netero was worn out from the fight with the guard, he temporarily heals the Princess, and the run back to mountain pass, Chrollo, Phinks and Phaeton all look at Crowley corpse and their nen aura are now glowing. Ging, Netero and the Princess head back and Ging discovers she was pregnant with another kid, Netero only has enough knowledge to perform the child birth but not to prolong her life. The Princess dies and the Ging starts crying that his love is dead and his best friend he spent so much time with is now dead. His life was nothing but failure and he can't bring himself to raise a child he names "Gon". He heads back to the village that he was forced to leave and begs someone to find someone who is more worthy of a parent than he is, the Village Elder feeling sorry for Ging and what he went through tells her about his grown up sister Mito living in the forest, the Elder tells her where she went to live and how to find her. Ging knocks on the door with and she notices a white haired man sitting with her, Ging asks that he needs to become a stronger person and then he will have the nerve to face Gon again, he won't know how long it takes, and it will take him a while. He wants Gon to be raised by people who aren't tainted by sin. Kite tells Ging he will watch over Gon out of her being friends with Mito, and Mito happily accepts because she always wanted a child. Meanwhile, Netero forms the Hunter Association and wants to regulate and keep Nen a secret to avoid people like Crowley, and wants to use Nen for good. The story ends.

Halo 5: Guardians Review

It's not terrible nor is it great. I'd say it's a mediocre game not bad but doesn't stand out or do a lot of things that are really interesting. The most interesting things about the game is the parallels to Halo 2. The game introduces a new character and is a 2nd protagonist to Master Chief. Well more he IS the protagonist, and he was never in his the previous entry, it has in universe politics in it's story, brings back the SMG, has the newly introduced character have most of the combat encounters with it's 2nd enemy type, has a multiplayer focus, you fight a giant enemy machine that is controlled by the Covenant, there is faction a civil war within the Covenant, it almost feels like 343 just wants to make their Halo 2.

I always compared Agent Locke to Kira Yamato from Gundam, and I somewhat stand by it. Both are so hated by their respective fandom but both are just "there" to me. Locke has kind of interesting backstory from what I got everyone in Fireteam Osiris does from what I can piece together. Blue Team gets introduced out of nowhere and are suddenly BFF with Chief out of nowhere. Cortana is basically Injustice Superman all though a tad bit more naunced since she doesn't want to kill Chief where the latter just kills anyone disagrees with him. All though she really comes off to me as a yandere despite that Chief and Cortana are friends. They try to make Halsey more sympathetic but the Halo canon has never done a good job at making me think she is anything less than a dick. 

Okay, I am talking about story way too much but gameplay is nothing remarkable. It has new moves which are mostly useless and often get you in trouble. Halo Infinite is better for actually having an addition in the series that you want to use. Promethan Combat is better and I will give 343 credit for trying to improve the combat where Bungie made Flood combat the same. It still isn't all the interesting since it's just really the same shootouts a lot, the arena design is pretty decent but I feel nothing stands out but is functional. The coop is where things get bad, this game was meant to be played with people. The friendly AI is really stupid. They are about as useful as human characters in DBZ against main villains whenever you fight tougher enemies especially in groups. The Warden is like Halo's Nemesis and he sucks every boss fight with him is the same. Just shoot his weak point or keep hitting him until he dies. This game and Halo 2 are toss up for worst campaign for me. Halo 2 has a lot of boring and frustrating parts, Halo 5 is just kind of dull with nothing that stands out.

I'll give this game one thing, I like how it gave the Arbiter agency and gave him his own sub plot, something Halo 3 never did. It's like Attack of the Clones, everyone hates that movie yet no one gives the movie credit for giving Obi Wan agency and his own sub plot.

Gears of War 2 Review

I'd probably call this a pretty good game. It beats the crap out of the first Gears. But it is funny, the devs knew that the constant cover shooting of Gears 1 was not that interesting so they mixed things up constantly.

You have enemies that summon tickers and can heal fallen soldiers, there are Reavers who get you out of cover, you have different portable cover you can use(my personal favorite being the shield that you can pick up), it has scripted sequences and a number of vehicle sections, as well a section where cover can be can be lowered, as well as Flamethrower Locusts to rush you out. It's almost like they were ashamed of the game being a cover shooter so they tried to stay away from pure cover shooting as much as they could. It's basically everything Uncharted 2 gets praised for but I feel this game actually does it well.

All though flaws with the games are the crazy amounts of staggering animations when getting hit which is supposed to reinforce the cover mechanic but it can be annoying whenever you are of cover and surronding by enemies, and it doesn't help that the friendly AI can still be stupid at times which can make the game frustrating because you are getting screwed over by the AI's stupidity. Some of the scripted sequences can be kind of annoying and sort of hard to tell what to do at first, which is an issue a lot of scripted sequences have. Some random cheap deaths here and there. And the A button being the cover, vault and sprint button is still as annoying as ever before due to accidently doing one action when you meant to do the other.

The story is surpsinginly decent. I enjoyed that Dom's wife's subplot since it added a bit more of a human element to the series. Marcus does more stuff that is more heroic and interesting like killing the worm, and helping those people. And the part where Cole was screaming and insulting the Locust Queen was epic mainly due to him telling her to shut up after the latter's excessive monologuing. Nice to see a popular sequel to a 7th gen franchise actually live up to the hype.

Metroid Dread Review

Pretty good game, could be my GOTY overall. All though not going to lie, the game's structure caught me off guard, I kept going around in circles for hours because I had a hard time figuring where to go but then it "clicked" and I knew where I was going with the occasional stump. It did catch me off guard, I was expecting to find tons of random stuff and secrets but the game was secretly bottlenecking me to go to a specfic places. But other than that, the bosses and controls all felt great. The best Metroid has ever been. 

Two things that did bug me was the EMMI killing due to the aiming controls and the amount of times you fight the Chozo Soldiers but those are minor. 

The homage to Metroid Prime at the end was cool too. The story felt like it was doing heavy amounts of retconning. Like the Chozo being alive, or how Samus is actually a Metroid or something. That and I kind of felt like they could've dived into Samus inner struggle like Fusion did but that would've most likely slowed the pace down. 

Give a 3D Metroid now, already played 3 2D games now. Don't want Other M to be the last of 3D Metroid lol. Though Prime 4 seems to be heading into Duke Forever territory.

Crappy Games Wiki Dead to Rights Retribution Entry Response

I've never liked this Wiki Page and I feel that they are really condescending, and I personally wanted to complain about them for a while, since I just beat this game and still really like it, I might as well tear apart these guys:

https://crappygames.miraheze.org/wiki/Dead_to_Rights:_Retribution

1. Really? It's "boring". You realize that combining beat em up and shooter gameplay it made the game different from other shooters? But then they say the game is "generic". Why are you complaining about the DTR being rebooted then complaining about it not "working for the series?"

2. How is it clunkly and terribly balanced? Headshots are super easy to make and the focus mode makes it easier, you can also use the clich and take hostages, you can send Shadow on them, and ammo isn't that hard to come by and encourages you to use different weapons. You can also Disarm enemies too.

3. How so? They aren't super great but they aren't the worst.

4. Buzzwords, so amazing. Grant City is a rundown shithole and looks like one. Boo hoo.

5. Go play most beat em ups with combos in them and the same problem applies. So this game sucks for having it? Plus the game isn't a full on brawler and also has shooter elements as well. So it isn't as dull.

6. You complain about the game being too easy and now you are complaing that it's harder. Make up your mind. Hitscan shooters tend to have awkward difficulty balancing too. Would you rather have a hitscan shooter be harder? I sure as hell don't.

7. It's pretty fun to pull off multiple headshots, plus there is the other stuff I mentioned that you can do and you run out of Focus pretty fast so it encourages you to vary it up.

8. SO WHAT? Why is this bad? Why is a 5-6 hour game bad? The first DTR had a ton of mini games to break up the pace and that game got boring after a point. And Titanfall 2 is 6 hours. Doom 1993 is 4 hours. My Friend Pedro is also shorter than that. Long games aren't inherently good.

9. Yeah this can be annoying but at the same time, Halo doesn't have grenade indicators and it's combat works better than CoD's which has them. CoD's doesn't even work that great either since you can run right into a grenade before the indicator pops up.

10. Yeah this can be annoying but headshots are easy and most enemies die in 2 hits from the Sniper.

11. Lots of games have dumb AI, and charging enemies is in plenty of games like Serious Sam and besides, enemies charging in this game mean you have to watch out and gun them down while enemies are shooting at you. Plus Shadow can come in handy too.

12. That can be annoying, but just use the clinch and you can generally gun down enemies out of nowhere.

13. No, ADS is pretty accurate, I played it, ADS works fine, got lots of headshots.

14. WELL IT'S A SHOOTER. Do you want them to scarifice actual gameplay to tell a story that was already not going to be better than in a movie or TV show? Exactly. And you prefer it over the first game, so it's not exactly a "bad quality".

This was a long one I wanted to do since I can't stand this page at all and find them to be really condescending, and this game just gave me the motivater to actually rip them a new one.

How I would write Naruto Post Time Skip

How I would write Naruto Post Time Skip

I make it no secret that I dislike Naruto's character after the time skip of the original series but I am going to put my money where my mouth is and try to see how I can make Naruto post time skip a more interesting character to me. I find Naruto Part 2 or Shippuden's failings with both Naruto and Sasuke as characters to be more fascinating than something that makes me angry and often mock. I will talk about Sasuke some other time but I will be talking about Naruto here.

First, here is the biggest problem with Naruto post time skip that just really annoys me. It's the fact that Naruto thinks like a stalker and someone who isn't inherently "there" in the head. This isn't bad on it's own, in fact, I felt Naruto was interesting in how it had its protagonist be a lot less deranged mentally compared to other shows. The problem is the lack of any kind of self awareness or any acknowledgement from the plot that Naruto is in fact not thinking clearly and that he is in fact so obsessed with Sasuke that it's detrimental to his mental health and how he acts in general. If the plot acknowledged this more instead of playing it entirely straight with a concept like this, then I feel Naruto post time skip could've been an amazing character especially for a shonen protagonist.

Here's what I would've done, I would keep Shippuden's first 2 arcs entirely the same. But where my version of the story diverges from is giving the characters of Sai and Tsunade more active roles in the story. After Sasuke refuses to go back to the village a 2nd time, Naruto starts to become depressed that he has no one to motivate him anymore. So now, he tries to find a new rival to match Sasuke through Sai, but here is the problem, Sai isn't as good as Sasuke at all, Naruto and Team 7 would go on various missions together and then Naruto realizes that Sai wasn't the guy he was looking for. He starts to miss and gets crazed over Sasuke as a result, Naruto later demands Tsunade to track down Sasuke so he can bring him back to the "light side". Tsunade straight up refuses, and tells Naruto that Sasuke is a criminal and has abandoned the Leaf Village, the latter has become a lost cause and isn't worth it. Tsunade shows more concern that she doesn't want Naruto to end up like other people in his life. So then Tsunade suspends Naruto from future missions until he gets his head together.

During this time, Naruto wants to get stronger and the only thing driving him now that someday he will fight Sasuke in battle so he trains and learns his new Jutsu the Rasen Shuriken. This then leads to his him defeating Kakazu.

Everything after I would keep the same except now when Naruto does his "Talk no Jutsu" on Nagato and the latter does his "Art of Rinne Rebirth" everyone who knows how to use Chakra sees what Naruto did to make Nagato change his mind while the villagers hate Naruto and the Leaf Government for doing a terrible job at defending the village. Naruto's ninja friends admire him and while the Leaf Villagers loathe him and then Danzo overthrows Tsunade through a democratic vote after rallying the Leaf Villagers to his cause. The series would then have Naruto learn how to control Kaurama so he can protect the Leaf better and the scene where he talks to his evil side in the Water Fall has more purpose because Naruto doubts he can control the Fox after how much the Leaf Village hates his guts.

Danzo has an iron grip on the Leaf Village and doesn't run things like Tsuande or any of the previous Kages did which would then lead to Sasuke attacking the Leaf Village under the orders of the Akatsuki, Naruto then fights Sasuke to a stalemate but senses good in Sasuke because the latter never tried to kill the Leaf but only went after Danzo. Sasuke kills Danzo and then Tsunade becomes Hokage again.

I would keep Obito's declaration of war and I would the uniting the villages mostly the same. The War Arc would take far too long for me to rewrite but to keep it short, Naruto and Sasuke fight again, but then he convinced Sasuke to change sides AND after Sasuke learns the full truth, they fight Obito while the Kages defeat the resurrected Madara. After this, Naruto and Sasuke have their final battle to see who is the best once and for all and then I end the series there.

In conclusion, there are other issues that prevent Naruto from being a great show but this is a major one that I am covering in this blog. I might do more, not sure. 

 

Serious Sam 4 Review

Outside of it's bad optimization and a little too many cutscenes, I think this is my 2nd favorite game in the series. I prefer it over 3 and TFE. The weapons are some of the most satisfying in the entire series. It doesn't rely on hitscan as much as SS3 does, on top of that the early levels are actually fun where SS3 gets good halfway through. I even did some of the side quests but they seem kind of like a waste since the items you get don't get to use in the final part of the game. 

Dual wielding awesome, all though I prefer to do it with some more than others. Pistols, shotguns, are the best to dual wield with. And the alt fire on the Laser Gun just devastes the shit out of enemies.

When it comes to the sheer number of enemies on screen, I don't think the new Doom games really compare. The amount of enemies that are populating the screen is just crazy and there's so many different types of enemies too.

The music is also my favorite in the series as well. Love the ambient tracks here as well as the remixed Cathedral theme. The sheer amount of guns that are in this game is kind of crazy to me as well.

I don't think I played a game that gave you so many guns to use since maybe Resistance 3 or a Ratchet and Clank game. I am surprised by how much I liked this game considering all the bad things I heard about it.

Halo Infinite Review

Its a pretty good game overall, not sure where this ranks in terms of the rest of the series but I say I prefer it over 2 and 5 at least. I predicted the open world was going to be like The Evil Within 2 and Gears of War 5 and it was basically just that. I didn't mind. That and the open world parts made my PC dip in fps so having those linear level broke up the pace. 343 did a great job with weapon feel like they always do. All though, some weapons I did use more than others. The Shock Rifle I preferred over the Disruptor. The Sentinel Beam felt way too powerful and the Covenant Carbine felt way better than the Plasma Pistol. The Boss fights were kind of lame as expected. They are better than Halo 2's if you can call it a complement. The story I actually found to be one of the better in the series. Its on par with Halo 4 for me. I liked the Pilot, and Chief and Cortana 2.0 had some charming and solid interactions. The villains were monologuing narcissists like always. Definitely one of the better new releases this year. Also another issue is that the game made you do those battery puzzles and 3 of something a little too much but it wasn't too bad.

Now, I feel 343 should just make single expansions instead of make a new mainline game. Whats here already works really well. Would be a shame to rebuild from scratch. They should do what Valve tried to do with the Half Life 2 expansions. Worked well for Doom Eternal.

Dead to Rights Series Brief Thoughts

Dead to Rights: 

This game is extremely bizarre. The first half of the game seems to know that the shooting is basic hitscan combat with weird controls so it breaks up the pace with these weird mini games, the drowning one being the absolute worst of the bunch. After, at a certain point, the mini games stop and then it becomes a straight up shooter and it can get feel drawn out at times. The game isn't that long but it can feel draggy at points. 

The story and presentation is rather strange, the whole game feels like it wants to be some kind of epic crime movie and it does have it's weird charm all though the in engine cutscenes feels like what would've happened if Remedy didn't give Max Payne it's signature comic book style cutscenes.

Dead to Rights 2:

Basically when I think of this game, I tend to think of Steve Blum and one of his more memorable game performances and the gameplay feeling a much jankier Strangehold. It's a fun short little game to play on a weekend.

Dead to Rights Retribution:

Out of all the DTR games you should play, this one is it. The game has a combination of melee and combat that I haven't seen many other shooters try to do before or since. It's cool the amount of combat options you have for a hitscan shooter. You can fist fight enemies, send Shadow on them, use Bullet Time and guns to get kills, disarm enemies, throw enemies into each other, do executions and even do them with weapons, take cover(which is often boring but I use it as a way to heal) and my personal favorite: the clinch. 

It makes for a combat that actually doesn't feel like it can get dull after a point for a game with hitscan weapons. 

The Shadow stealth sections are okay and are decent enough, it's interesting to play a stealth game as a dog.

God of War: Ascension Review

For the sake of crossing off the final Greek God of War game and while the game isn't terrible, it's just forgettable and mediocre. Everything about it felt like I was going through the motions and the Uncharted like climbing didn't help it. I can't really think of anything that Acension has over other games in the series. It's such a shame because God of War 3's engine looks amazing and is fantastic here, and it pains me to see it get wasted on a forgettable game.

Everything Acension does, God of War 3 does better. The story is almost like an anime filler arc. The events of it never gets mentioned later in the series and it just feels so skippable. Kratos is extremely boring and stuff where he says, "I have spilled enough innocent blood" feels unearned. Orkos and Kratos barely even interact. 

The ending is so contradicting considering Kratos still remembers and hates himself for killing his family later in the timeline anyway. It's out of place. An alright game, but I am reminding myself that games I found mediocre at the time are still mediocre now.

Batman: Arkham Knight Brief Thoughts

Yeeeeeeah, I know why this game left a bad taste in my mouth when I beat it the first time. The game could've just ended with the Jason Todd unmasking and then Batman apprehends Scarecrow but then it goes on for another couple of more hours. 

And it just drags on and on. Rocksteedy also proves that Joker is the only villain they even know how to write. I don't even get how Crane was still a threat after Jason Todd turned face. It was literally the latter's milita forces. And it felt like the Batmobile getting destroyed was the "point of no return" but it keeps going.

And after dragging itself out for so long, the game then expects you to 100% the game to get the "true" and conclusive ending, and the ending isn't even worth all those hours Despite Knight adding some neat additions to the series and some cool ideas to the formula. I still think it's the weakest in the Arkham series, that and the games taking place over the course of a night gimmick is just silly now.

Resistance 2 Review

 

Resistance 2 Review

Alright, this is going to be a weird review from me, I have bashed this game for a long time, I often considered this game to be the first disappointing game I ever played and consider this game to be one of the worst FPS sequels ever and I always preferred Resistance Fall of Man and 3 over it by a large margin. Recently, I beat the game a couple of months ago and I actually really enjoy the game now, I still consider this game to be the weakest in the Resistance trilogy but still a pretty good game nonetheless.

First, I will address a big reason why I was able to enjoy this game much more this time around and this is going to be a huge red flag for a lot of people, but hear me out, I think it is better that you play this game on the Easiest Difficulty. Easy Mode? Why is it that? Here's the big issue, the Normal Difficulty is borderline broken. You take very little damage and you are forced to take cover and hide behind things waiting for your health to regen. But isn't all cover based shooters more enjoyable on Easy? The thing is, Resistance 2 has a huge enemy count, has AI that will flank you too, even has enemies that rush you out of cover, and also has a number of Chimerian Titans this time around so when you combine all this with taking very little damage on Normal Difficulty, it creates for an infuriating experience where you will die a lot. The regen health often feeling like a handicap where every time the player rushes in and tries to do some serious running and gunning and tries to be the Chimerian Super Soldier that is Nathan Hale, they will just be seeing the game over screen a lot. It isn't far off from how Halo 2's difficulty is broken and both games focused on multiplayer too. The section with 3 Chimerian Titans with the exploding cars feels almost borderline crazy on Normal since you take very little damage and when you throw that in with all the cover around you that explode, it creates for a frustrating experience. Now, if you play on Easy, it has the health pool that should've been in the game's Normal Mode to begin with and you can take much more damage and actually do the running and gunning with the satisfying and great weapons that Insomniac is known for. It's much easier to appreciate the enemy count during the game's bigger fire fights.

Before I get to the good things, I will mention a few more negatives and okay aspects about the game. The Invisible Monsters are terrible, I will not be defending them, they are really obnoxious and I have no idea what Insomniac thought what kind of interesting gameplay would happen if they killed you in one hit. It's a bunch of trial and error and memorizing when the monsters will spawn so you can kill them before they hit you. It just feels out of place in a game like this since it's a shooter where you are mowing down dozens of enemies. The scripted sequences are a mixed bag, the one with the Bees are pretty bad since it requires you to know where exactly to go while being chased and you have to be running away at all times just to effectively make past it. The one with the Leviathan is pretty good and impressive at the time seeing that big monster move around and throw you, hitting it with a rocket after luring to a bunch of explosives felt satisfying. The one with time limit on the ship wasn't the greatest mainly because it just involving you running away before it explodes, there's not much going on. The final section where you get the ability to blow up all the enemies with your hands was pretty good, and felt cathartic too after struggling to get through the Chimera but now killing all them easily with flick of your hands.

I will address the other elephant in the Room and that is the 2 weapon limit, while I am not the world's biggest fan of it, I don't think weapon limits are inherently a bad idea. FEAR does it well and games like Bishock lets you hold all your guns and combat in that game is terrible. I think R2 handles it well enough. It isn't the Call of Duty way where you have dozens of interchangeable hitscanning machine guns, R2 does make you switch and use different weapons often. You won't actively be using the Carbine and Bullesye, some weapons which will be available during certain fights that will make you use them. When a Chimeran Titan shows up you will be using a Rocket and Grenade Launcher, during close quarters encounters with the zombies, you will have to and need to use the Splicer or Shotgun if not both. Areas with lots of cover will make the player and have an Auger be available. And compared to shooters like Halo, the weapons in R2 are a lot more interesting for the alternate sci fi setting that Resistance is set in. The Splicer is a great weapon that is very much a homage to Ratchet and Clank, the Magnum Pistol is great and lets you be creative with when to detonate the rounds, the Pulse Cannon is just crazy powerful and you already have interesting Resistance staples like the Bullseye and Auger. As much as I dislike that the weapon wheel is gone, I can tolerate it in this game.

I will mention some more positives, the damage animations and feeling of the weapons themselves are all very good and is a big improvement over Fall of Man, where the weapon feel and damage animations in the latter felt "good enough". Headshots feel very good and have a nice *spalt* sound along with the series' having the chimera groan after they get hit with a weapon. There's a nice amount of gore when using on grenades on enemies too. The Auger can now see through walls when equipped and it feels much better to use since it's easier to tell what you are shooting when firing with it, where in Fall of Man you just had to peak behind corners or just move the reticule around when behind a wall and hope it hits red and maybe you might damage the enemies. The Bullseye's tag is a lot more consistent this time around where in Fall of Man you either had a 50-50 chance of it not landing. A big surprise for me in this game is how big the enemy count was, I remember Insomniac said in an interview for R2 that they aimed for scale and it shows in the campaign and not just with the Leviathan. The enemy count in this game is crazy for a console shooter. The Chicago mission in particular had lots of allies as well as Chimeran foot soldiers, sentries and Stalkers all duking it out. It was really eye catching how much different variables and AI Insomniac had to put into. It almost felt like a Serious Sam game at times with the amount of enemies there were. Killzone 2 also had something like this which came out a few months later. The game tends to have an enemy count even in regular firefights that weren't really in shooters especially console shooters at the time.

In conclusion, for a game I disliked for so many years, I was shocked to find out that Resistance 2 at least when played on Easy can be a really enjoyable shooter. I do wish Insomniac balanced the difficulty better, this was also an issue with a game they made a year before with Ratchet and Clank Tools of Destruction.

Why I dislike Shinji Ikari

 

Why I dislike Shinji Ikari

I make it no secret that I am not the world's biggest Neon Genesis Evangelion fan. I don't think it's a terrible show, I think the show is overall "okay" but it seems in recent times, the show has gotten so much love to the point where it has even garnered critical immunity, and one aspect of the show that has gotten quite a lot of critical immunity is the character of Shinji Ikari. A couple of years ago, the character was often derided for being too "whiny" and others would also try to defend him and it sparked a flame war that went on for many years but now, it seems the former has mostly died off or at least are too scared to actually admit it without being attacked by legions of fanboys. What is the point of all this rambling? I want to go into specific detail as to why I think Shinji is not as interesting of a character as Evangelion fans like to think he is. I also want to credit a person named Archaeon for making me create this write up. His review on MAL managed perfectly encapsulates why I never liked Shinji even back when I was a teenager when I first watched the series. Now, let's get started.  

The biggest reason why I dislike Shinji is simple really, he doesn't have an actual motivation as to why he does what he does. He has nothing that drives him as a character. To put it very bluntly, all the guy wants is wants pity. Throughout the whole show, and I really do mean throughout the whole show, Shinji spends his entire character wanting sympathy from other people. He makes and the show will it ever so tell you that he pilots the Evangelion only because people actually acknowledge him. This wouldn't be so bad but the big issue is that Shinji never actually tries to make his life better for himself. It's not so much that he is "whiny" it's that he never really tries at all. A traditional hero in a story would have a character flaw but would have to deal with and also and this is very important, overcome his flaw and try to rise above that. If I wrote Evangelion, I could've written Shinji in one of two ways. One way is that he knows that piloting the Evangelion is the only thing people actually like him for so he tries to play that to his advantage and try to live off the fame he got for being an Eva pilot, then he realizes that the fame isn't what he really wants and then Karou shows up does what he does(I will explain this later) and then Shinji decides to bring the fight to the Angels and kill them once and for all because his hatred for the Angels is the only thing that drives him now. Another way is to have Shinji be extremely suicidal and have his attempts at piloting the Eva be constant suicide missions and every time he would fight he would always come out alive, thanks to his dead mom and Gendo's neglect, Shinji has some strong abandonment issues but then he slowly starts to build a bond with characters like Misato, Asuka and Rei, and then realizes he has something to live for. What do both of these scenarios have in common? They be more typical of a traditional story, yes, but at the same time, it would make Shinji more interesting to me because at least he would have flaws and try to overcome them. What makes fiction interesting is conflict and the issue with Shinji is that he doesn't try to actually try to fight the conflict that he has with himself. A part of me just wonders why he doesn't just commit suicide if he refuses to fight back and refuses to find self worth for himself to this degree. I don't get how he is relatable either, sure he connects to people who also extremely depressed and live crappy lives but at the same time, the guy can pilot a huge robot and can kill aliens. This isn't exactly relatable to me. The final nail in the coffin for Shinji's character is his relationship with Karou. Here's the thing with this, Kaoru only ever got to Shinji because he played with his emotions and gave him the very thing Shinji wanted throughout the whole series, you guessed it: pity. It's not so much this I have a problem with, it's Shinji's reaction to the whole ordeal. The guy acted like Karou actually did care for him and gets depressed yet again when all the latter really did was use him for his nefarious endgame. I try not to let a character be exactly like me, but I feel Shinji should've been really pissed and had enough of being used by other people and just wanted to kill the Angels to get it over with. If they went with this route, this could've given Shinji some degree of character since he is displaying character traits that isn't whining and saying, "I do and I don't" constantly. The thing Eva was written by a depressed person and it shows in a number of ways. For one, it's a story about humanity fighting against all odds yet the number one group that is the most capable has no one in the team who practices mental health to have them be in good psychological state.  

I will compare Shinji Ikari to two characters I think are more interesting. First is Tatshiro Sato from Welcome to the NHK. The latter is also a depressed nerd like Shinji but unlike Shinji he actually does try to want to make life better for himself despite not always succeeding, the difference here is that he Sato does try, where Shinji kills aliens and then spends multiple episodes wanting pity from people afterwards.

Another character comparison and this is going to be a weird one, but Naruto Uzumaki...from Part 1. Naruto actually started off his series not too different from Shinji and I used to dislike the former as a character but there is more layers to him than I thought. Naruto also never had much in the way of parental figures growing up but the biggest difference here is that Naruto never lets that get to him. Naruto actually TRIES to want make life better for himself. He spent his whole life being neglected by everyone in his village for holding a monster inside of his body, a monster who killed thousands of people many years back in his village, but the thing is, Naruto actually tries to stand out by acting like a goofball idiot. He wants people to respect him and look up to him and if he did what he was told, it would only have people ignore him and make life more depressing for himself. Naruto acts like a knucklehead because he knows it have people notice him more if he didn't act like one. What is the biggest difference here? Naruto doesn't spend Part 1 wanting to have pity from other people, he a motivation and drive to want to do what he does. That is what makes an interesting character, not them being exactly like me and having a similar life but how they choose to deal with problems.

Now I will address one more point before I close this write up, and it is the, "Get in the Robot Shinji" scene. Eva fans often say people hate him because of this scene. But here is my issue with it, for a character they try to establish as being "unlikable", I argue they don't go far enough with it. It's basically Shinji doing what he always does, piloting the robot so he can get sympathy from other people. Why not have Shinji refuse the pilot the robot so much to the point where the Angel causes extreme collateral damage? Have Rei actually pilot her Eva and then get beaten by it nearly to death? This could've at least taken Shinji's unlikablity to interesting places since it establishes that he hates his father so much that he would rather watch humanity burn then save it. Compare this another show Ashita no Joe, where Joe refuses to become a boxer at multiple points so much so that he lands himself in Juvie and gets into all kinds bad situations, they actually take his unlikablity to places and it pays off later where Joe realizes that boxing is what gives his life meaning and gives the motivation to not be delinquent.

In Conclusion, I dislike Shinji, not because he is "whiny" it's because he just wants pity and nothing else. Nothing that makes me want to admire him or find anything interesting to stand out. His refusal to fight his inner demons is what makes him so dull to me. 

Why are Superheroes so Dominant in today's Movies and Modern Media in General?

 

Why are Superheroes so Dominant in today's Movies and Modern Media in General?

Before I continue writing this, I recommend a video by Exalted Speed that helped me inspire the creation of this blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAe1k04g-w&t=2s

Superheroes have been everywhere in modern media especially in movies and live action TV shows, in fact, they appear in almost anything of the live action variety nowadays. So much so that the term "capeshit" has been invented and there's a huge hype backlash going against them on the internet as of late. Here, I am going to examine why this is the case and the reason why they are so dominant in recent years.

As much as it pains me to admit it, when MCU fans use genre labels to try to distinguish the movies, they kind of have a point. The big reason as to why superheroes have yet to die out is because really, you can put these characters in almost any kind of genre and story and it's almost always a guarantee sell. You can make a superhero story about almost anything really. The first Iron Man was a military movie with Iron Man, Captain America the Winter Soldier is an espionage story with Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy is a sci fi epic, Spider-Man Homecoming is a teenage comedy drama, the Daredevil Netflix show is a courtroom drama, the recent Shang Chi is a martial arts movie with a superhero skin. This can apply to non MCU examples too, Logan is basically a western, Punisher Warzone can be viewed as the traditional action movies that superhero movies have mostly killed off, Man of Steel can be viewed as a coming of age Alien Invasion Story, both Justice Leagues are Seven Samurai with Superheroes. It's endless really, this is the reason why superheroes have lasted so long in Western Comics too. Why go out of your way to make a new original property which won't sell nearly as well, when you can make a Romantic Comedy out of Spider-Man and it will sell like crazy?

This now transitions me to my next point, before, Hollywood would rely on the power of the movie stars to sell their movies. In the 80s it was Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeanne Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren(who starred in a Punisher movie), to name a few. Then in the 90s, it was Keanu Reeves, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Steve Buscemi and others. And the original Superman movie needed star power in order to sell people that it was a genuinely serious take on the idea of the superhero, the advantage of the movie star is that since they are people rather than characters, depending on how attached certain people were to them, you could watch them in almost anything. Many people watched the Matrix for Keanu Reeves, many watched Men in Black for Will Smith, many people watched the first Mission Impossible for Tom Cruise. It gave the chance for a movie with less than "marketable" premise to make money because if you could land on one these big stars in your movie, it *could* sell well. Mad Max probably wouldn't have been as big if it weren't for Mel Gibson, same can be said of Lethal Weapon and Braveheart too. Sixth Sense probably wouldn't be as big of a hit if it didn't have Bruce Willis. There's many examples. Now, with the reliance on characters over actors is that the thing is, characters don't have to rely on making sure they remain acceptable in the public eye and add social media where it's harder to get away with making mistakes in public. That and the movies require so much money to make that they need to sell overseas, and a character with an "iconic" look will generally be enough to sell people of cultural and national boundaries more than a face of an actor and their acting nuances. That and when you add movie reviews and the internet into the mix where people will watch a movie based on if they do well with critics rather than a movie because an actor they like is starring in it and you can see why the movie star died out

Anthony Mackie makes a great point in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oj8JK6c5x3M

On a side note I am surprised they let him say the stuff he did in that video.

In conclusion, I think these are the reasons why Superheroes have stayed for so long, it's because of how marketable they are and easy it is to shove them in any kind of story.

Level Design Analysis Series #1: Call of Duty Advanced Warfare

 

Level Design Analysis Series #1: Call of Duty Advanced Warfare

There was a series of videos from a person by the name of Jared Russo who did a series called "Level Design Hall of Fame". He also did a Hall of Shame but the point is that he made a level design analysis video series on various games including God of War, Sly Cooper and Halo and I will admit, those videos were not very good but I do think the idea is interesting and sound, and I want to make my own spin on the concept, so I will be doing my first in a possible series of level design analysis write ups on various games that has level design that stands out to me.

First up, I will be doing one on Call of Duty Advanced Warfare, and this will be a write up that will be more critical of the level design than me praising it.

I wrote a blog years back on talking about Call of Duty's shooting mechanics and this might be a follow up of sorts. I always felt the Sci Fi CoD games had potential to be something interesting but the fact that the series refuses to genuinely innovate is a big part of what held it back.

Before I get to the level design itself, I will bring up why Call of Duty was made and what made the campaigns scripted to begin with. When Medal of Honour Allied Assault came out, the creators were tired of the whole "one man army" approach that the MoH games and fps games in general were known for, so the devs decided to make a game where the player was a lone solider working alongside other soldiers during various WW2 battles to make it feel like they were all playing a part in the battle rather than one solider doing everything. In classic MoH games, every objective was done by the player, the battle and what drove the outcome was driven entirely by the player, it never felt like the other characters were helping you and it felt like everything revolved around the player. In CoD, you were a solider that worked alongside the infantry to help change the outcome of battle. You would follow them, they would distract enemies, they give the player "barks" that can help them on what do during  situation and the player felt like the ones who helped turned the tide of battle during "impossible odds". The player was also the one to deliver the finishing blow and do all of the major set pieces to help keep the feeling of empowerment. It was essentially another way of having the "illusion" of war but this time it felt like your fellow combat in arms were actually playing a part. The name "Call of Duty" came from this.

And while it worked for the first few CoD games, after World at War, this whole method of scripting and approach to design started to clash with the dumb over the top action movie tone of Modern Warfare 2 and onwards. In the latter, you were trying to be a badass action movie hero like John Rambo and John Matrix, and the game would often chastise you for running ahead and shooting everything in sight. It was getting more and more obvious that these campaigns felt like scripted roller coaster rides then  playing actual levels in a shooter. While there is a charm to that approach, it did lead to an identity crisis when CoD was steering more towards the one man army approach that was against the idea why the series was made to begin with. 

And now this finally leads me to Advanced Warfare. That one man army approach that I mentioned would've actually have helped this game then detract because I feel the scripted nature plus the way CoD arenas are designed really hold back what could've been a good fps campaign. In CoD AW, you get various Exo Suit abilities that can help you in battle, but here is the thing, a lot of these abilities you will never need to use because CoD's traditional shooting gameplay will get you by almost if not every enemy encounter. In the opening level, you get the ability to Double Jump and Slow Down your landing, but the problem is, the level design never actually supports it. A lot of the combat arenas lack any verticality or uneven terrain to make you want to jump around. The arena design is often just flat slopes with lots of cover, you don't gain any benefits from jumping around and then attacking the enemies since there are lots of cover and there is only one or two areas you can double jump too. The enemies don't double jump or actively move around either which can lead you to doing more of what I mentioned.

This is just one example, later you get the ability to perform Bullet Time, but you are never given any actual reason to use it because the enemies go down in a couple of hits and acting flashy with the Bullet Time in any way will lead to your death, and you can only use it a few times and that's it, the ability isn't even on a cool down. The same can be said for the Riot Shield too. Using that is more risky than beneficial since you need to be up close and enemies can gun you down very quickly plus it's easier to hide behind cover and wait for the health to regen because the level design gives you lots cover, and it's easier to do that because rushing in with the Riot Shield will make it harder for your health to regen due to the fact groups of enemies are shooting at you.

You also get a climbing gloves as well, but they are only ever used during scripted sequences, so it might as well be not even be in your loadout since you won't be actively using them.

There is a Stim but at the same time, the levels are most just a linear line with lots of cover, if this was a limited health system it could encourage the player to use it but since there is lots of cover, you will just rely on regen health.

You get a lot of different grenade types but once again, a reoccurring theme with this game is that level and enemy design does not support the use of them because it's easier just to do the traditional ADS shooting, wait for health to regen then shoot.

Then there is the scripted sequences which is another big factor that I think really holds the game back. On top of the levels being design like your typical CoD shooting galleries, there is an over abundance of scripted sequences. The game gives me all this fancy sci fi abilities and the characters act cool during cutscenes. So the level design in the actual shootouts don't support much reason to do to use the mechanics but the scripted sequences rob players of interesting scenarios they could be doing themselves. Two examples is when the player and an npc has to infiltrate a base and use an invisibility cloak but the during this entire sequence, you are following an npc and only using the cloak when the game tells you to, it's also jarring considering the game has a decent stealth section before that which I will mention later. The second example is where the player is chasing someone through traffic and the player has to jump on a series of cars to catch up to the enemy but instead this is done through some very jarring QTEs instead of the player having to actually watch out and time their jumps through traffic.

To avoid being a Negative Nancy, I do feel there are times where the mechanics and level design do come together. The mission "Sentinel" has the player sneak into a party and avoid killing civilians and getting caught. This is a much loathed scripted stealth section, but it's actually not bad here because the player is given a decent array of tools to complete it. You have a grappling hook which is utilized really well here. There's lots of verticality in the level and you can also perform takedowns with the grappling hook, the AI is forgiving enough for the stealth not to be frustrating. There's lots of cover to sneak past enemies and the best part is, this isn't designed like the rest of the levels which is either a traditional CoD shooting gallery with fancy abilities and a scripted sequence. There is some degree of decision making here. Do you go on the lower floors and risk guards and civilians or do you take the high ground and risk the drones looking for you. I really feel if the game was designed like this, then there could've been a very good game here. Unfortunately this only lasts about 15 minutes and it's back to the traditional gameplay but it does get a little better. Some of the later levels do use the grappling hook decently enough like when you have to take down 3 armoured enemies and you are given a decent sized arena to take them out in, it's nothing special but it does give you more to work with that typical shootouts. The level on the boat does let you Double Jump more now that there is some degree verticality even if the game goes back to traditional shooting galleries later.

So how can I improve this game? I would take the MoH Allied Assault and Crysis approach with the level design. I would have open areas where the player can use their Exo Abilities and complete various objectives in those levels, the player can use stealth in a way that is designed in the Sentinel mission or can go guns blazing or can combine the 2 with the various abilities. I would bring back the One Man Army approach since I feel it would fit the game more. Then I would contrast them with linear missions where the player has setpieces where they would have more agency and decision making during the setpieces. Like using Double Jump to dodge debris, use the Grapple Hook while platforms are falling and or use the Bullet Time to shoot grenades to blow up a wall.

Part of me wonders if this will be an ongoing series but only time will tell.

The Importance of Fictional Jobbers

 

The Importance of Fictional Jobbers

I seem to notice particularly in the anime community that characters who often lose fights a lot or doesn't help defeat the main villain in any way or aren't "useful" are considered to be pointless and badly written characters who serve no purpose. Basically, what Professional Wrestling labels as "Jobbers" or what TV Tropes calls "the Worf Effect". I argue that the "Jobbers" or "the Worf Effect" serves a very important purpose in fictional stories, action based stories or stories with lots of fights in particular. I think it's a trope that often gets taken for granted and doesn't get the credit it deserves. Like with many tropes in fiction it serves a very specific purpose.

Before I go onwards, I am going to be talking about where the term "Jobber" got its origin from: Professional Wrestling. I am going to be using it as a basis for my argument since many if not all action stories tend to be similar to what Pro Wrestling does like Shonen Anime, Superhero Comics, or any story that involves lots of fictional fighting, and if you don't watch Pro Wrestling, try to bear with me because I will try to explain the best I can. In a Pro Wrestling company like say, the WWE, their job is to get a Wrestler "over" or in other words, attached to the crowd whether they'd be a Baby Face(Good Guy) or a Heel(Bad Guy). They do this by giving Wrestlers "gimmicks" or characters and see if the crowd will in a Baby Face's case "cheer" for them or in a Heel's case "boo" them. Another way to have wrestlers get "over" with the crowd is having the wrestlers whether they'd be Baby Face or a Heel is for them to win matches or "fights". This is where Jobbers and "Jobbing" in general comes in. If a wrestler whether Baby Face or Heel wins a lot of matches and is "booked" or portrayed in a dominant manner, the audience might have a high chance of getting attached to that wrestler. Jobbers are the ones who always tend to lose "fights" to make the other Wrestler look "dominant". If there were no "Jobbers" in Pro Wrestling, it would be utterly impossible to have the audience be attached anyone in storylines they are trying to tell. The more victories wrestlers get being Face or Heel, the audience becomes attached. So if say you want to establish how "strong" a newer Wrestler is, you have them get victories over the Jobbers and then eventually have them win over established names or even the Champions to show, how "strong" that wrestler actually is. What I am trying to say in all this is that the whole point is "investment" and Pro Wrestling companies like WWE tries to establish new stars or show off how "cool" older guys are by having constant victories. It's a show about "fighting" after all so how to establish someone as tough in a fictional setting? Fighting whether it'd be through constant wins or losses.

Now, apply what I have just described to fictional action based stories and the same rules apply. You want to establish that a character is really tough, have them beat up the show's "Jobber" or have them beat up an established name to show off how "tough" they really are. And this is where, my argument for "useless" characters in fighting shows comes in: you need this trope because without it, communicating to the audience how "strong" someone is would be extremely hard. The execution of that trope can vary with every story but I think the trope doesn't get enough credit and often gets looked down upon whenever they are used.

I often notice this trope being looked down upon in the anime community in particular where shows like Dragon Ball(particularly Z), Naruto and Bleach are notrious for having "useless" characters where shows like Hunter X Hunter, Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, and even Western Cartoons like Avatar the Last Airbender often get praised because every character is portrayed in a "dominant" manner and no one is "useless". This is where I say that belief is incredibly misguided. I tend to notice that lots of people attack Akria Toriyama in particular for the fact that the human characters like Tien, Krillin, Yamcha and Choitzu tend to be Jobbers for the villains and how characters like Vegeta never gets a victory over a main villain or how Piccolo never beats a main bad guy and while I have many issues with Dragon Ball as a story, I say for the most part, Toriyama actually uses this trope very effectively. Think about it, would Nappa be half as intimidating in the Sayain Saga if they didn't beat up Piccolo, Tien and the rest of the non Goku characters the way they did? The Kaioken technique would not feel half as impressive and Goku's growth as a fighter would not be as noticeable if Nappa didn't beat the crap out of the before mentioned characters. Think about it, those characters were on Raditz's level or slightly stronger when they fought Nappa, and it was said that Nappa and Vegeta were way stronger than Raditz, it would make them look pathetic if Piccolo and the crew took out Nappa and laid a dent on Vegeta before Goku showed up. Vegeta before Dragon Ball Super also got bashed a lot for never beating a main villain but here's the thing, Vegeta is Goku's "equal" and are the same alien race. If Frieza, Cell and Buu didn't beat up Vegeta as effectively as they did, how would they be established as a powerful threat? Beating the human characters was usually a quick way to establish how powerful a villain is but Vegeta is the 2nd highest on the totem pole so having him losing to establish how powerful a main villain is makes sense. Would Perfect Cell even work as a powerful villain half as well if he didn't humiliate Vegeta after getting out of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber? How else would they show off how much Goku "one upped" Vegeta after the former got out of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber? Exactly. Would Buu be half a threat if Tien lasted 20 minutes against him? Exactly. It make the former look terrible.

Now, where Toriyama uses this trope very poorly is with Gohan, Goten and Trunks in the Buu Saga. The Cell Saga established that Gohan was going to replace Goku as the new protector of the Earth and Goku makes it clear that it's up to the next generation to take on any future threats to the world because he won't always be around. Yet the Saga has both Gohan, Goten and Trunks go through lots of training and hardships just for them to be beaten by Buu and have Goku and Vegeta come back. Then having Goku be the one to beat Buu. This is where Toriyama falters. To go back to Pro Wrestling, this is like if a Wrestling company had Gohan, Goten and Trunks be in line to win the title against a dominant heel champion at a Pay Per View and then they would lose after all that build and then they would have an established name in which it is Goku win the title. Where I think Gohan as a character and his arc is fine in the Buu Saga to varying degrees, it feels like here Toriyama was too scared to just have Goku be written out of the series.

Another example where the Worf Effect is used well is in Naruto...well Part 1. In Part 1, Sasuke Uchiha was the go to Jobber to establish how powerful an enemy was, whether it would be Haku, Gaara or Orochimaru. He's basically Naruto's Vegeta or to use a western example, Naruto's Wolverine. Would Haku, and especially Gaara and Orochimaru feel half as effective as villains if Sasuke beat him extremely easily? Nope. They would not feel very powerful at all.

 

Where Naruto screws up is in Part 2 where Naruto and Leaf Village spends many episodes trying to have all the villages unite against a common force which was Obito and Madara Uchiha, and in that arc that the former spent so long trying to create gets destroyed and humiliated very early on after all that build up and then Naruto and Sasuke and a few other characters were taking on Madara. What was really even the point of all that? It felt like they could've had Naruto solo everybody especially when they establish that his Shadow Clones are stronger than one of the Kages.

A show that actually uses this trope consistently and without many issues is surprisingly Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex. Yup, a show that isn't 100% about action actually uses this trope the most efficiently. In GITS SAC, they use the Dragon Ball Z hierarchy to establish how powerful villains are. For lower level threats the Tachikomas are usually the ones to take the fall and it works because they are childlike machines that has their AI uploaded into another mechanical body. Then for the 2nd highest on the Totem Pole, Batou is like Vegeta in that if you *really* want to establish a villain as a threat you have the villain beat the former up. It works really well towards the ending of the first season and really well with his fight against Hideo Kuze in the 2nd Season. The latter does an excellent job at showing how much of a physical threat Kuze is. In an interesting somewhat subdued take on the trope is with the character of Togusa. He's meant to be the weak but also human link of Section 9 and it often shows how much he struggles against enemies in episodes focused on him, he very much struggles makes mistakes and can barely make his way out which makes it more impressive when Section 9 works as a team when they start to wreck havoc against the villains Togusa was struggling against or at least the types of people he was dealing with.

I want to discuss on what happens when you see the lack of this trope or when it's not used often enough. And I am going to use Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood of an example when this trope is barely there. In my FMAB blog, I complained about how that show had most it's villains feel very weak outside of Lust, Bradley and Father and I know why now. It's because that show never really had a dedicated Jobber character like a Wolverine, Batou, Sasuke or Vegeta. Greed was sort of that but he was only used to make Bradley look tough and not anyone else. Buccaneer and Fuu also got killed by Bradley which makes me wonder couldn't the other villains be portrayed this dominantly? The show had a super big cast I mean couldn't the Chimeras, Lan Fan after the arm chop off with Bradley, Greed, Mustang, both Armstrongs, job to other villains to establish how tough they are? Envy, Pride, Sloth, Gluttony and even Kimblee to some degree desperately needed some actual wins to possibly have them win me over but they never do. If they just at least got some victories, I might've sort of taken them seriously as characters. It goes to show, if every character is useful, then the villains are the useless characters. Tropes exist for a reason

Avatar is another show that needed a Jobber character. Sokka was sort of that but the villains never humiliate him that badly to make me hate them. Azula and Ozai especially never felt very threatening to me because there wasn't enough wins for both of them to make me care for them and make even feel anything which is probably also due to the show being a kids cartoon so they can't have character be brutally beaten up or have villains be portrayed way too dominantly.

 

In Conclusion, Jobbers and the Worf Effect is a trope that should be viewed more carefully. When a character is Jobbing is it for the reasons that benefit the story? If not then bash it, if it's just that the trope is actively being used then I think you should examine more carefully.

Online Fandoms and Why Do I Even Bother?

 

Online Fandoms and Why Do I Even Bother?

This is going to be a strange write up from me, I usually tend to critique or examine a topic, but I am going to make an exception here. Another exception I am making is that I am breaking my code of never talking about my personal life or at least doing so in a write up. This blog is going to have a lot of rambling in it and probably isn't going to be structured or planned as well as I think because this might be my first and only personal blog. I have recently watched the Anime series Genshiken and I have been talking about that show a lot on my Twitter feed lately, and the reason why is only because I think it's a very good show but because I feel the club that characters go to is how I feel what in a sense what a media discussion community should feel like while the characters have their own sets of problems, they seem to genuinely enjoy talking about the media they like and when they do get into disagreements, it never gets out of hand, it never gets "toxic", there is no hive mind mentality and no one is being overly defensive like their lives are at risk because there is one disagreement. There is no taste discussion elitism or any form condescension. It actually feels like a causal disagreement among friends who like to hang out and do express their liking for their hobbies together.

Which is what transitions to me my next topic. I have been on internet fandom communities since 2008 and I can't help but say that the internet has to be the biggest missed opportunity for media discussion ever. When I was in middle school and high school, I always wanted a place where I could discuss media whenever I wanted and have people who are just like "me" or as passionate as I was in a sense to talk about media with. I did have that at times, but it was never something that would happen every day. People back then always spoke of music, sports and dating with some other stuff in between but talking about media and letting my inner fan out was usually rare. Which is why I often went to stuff like the Youtube Comments because there was people who were passionate about media as I was. I often got attacked and insulted a lot in the Youtube Comments sections and when I was younger, I would participate in these "flame wars" but the more I grew older, the more I realized how much of a waste of time it all was. I often tried to not be rude and I would just state my opinion on its own and that would either get people who were overly defensive or people who would throw insults at me. At times, I was like, "guys it's just a piece of media" and that is kind of ironic because that is what people in real life would tell me whenever I got overly passionate. Years later, the more Youtube started phase itself as sort of a social media platform(you could've used as that despite not officially being social media) and I went to Twitter, and at first, things weren't too bad and it actually seemed "good" but the more I started to stay on there, the more I started to get annoyed with many things. Around 2017, I feel is where it started to really to grate me. Twitter introduced so much crap that eventually would lead me to absolutely not stand it anymore. Examples including, seeing tweets that people who you are following liked, seeing replies to other people's tweets, and that and the usual stuff I couldn't stand like gif posting instead of arguments, quote tweeting because hitting the reply button would make you get less attention and you appear to be "cooler". When you add up all this and more you got the rise of Twitter personalities who didn't even actually have to do anything in life to get a lot of followers. These people I am talking about use all these things I have mentioned to their advantage to become "famous".  I remember when people were talking about, "Youtube Whores" many years back who used Youtube's false thumbnails and it's faulty algorithm to make money, I am starting to think these "Twitter Whores" are barely any different. With the rise of the "Twitter Whore", this now leads to why I think Social Media particularly Twitter has become something I tolerate less of as time goes on. It leads to people pushing false narratives and hive mind thinking. To name a specific example, a game journalist writes a headline that sounds questionable. The first thing will happen is that these "Twitter Whores" will Quote Tweet them and then mock that said journalist despite not actually reading the article in question. They then get their followers to like and retweet what they are Quote Tweeting. These "Twitter Whores" think they are smart for attacking the journalist but did they ever thought to think that by insulting that journalist and giving his article a crap load of attention, you are directly inspiring him to write even more articles with questionable headlines and giving the his website tons of traffic? By this point, you aren't really critiquing him, you are giving him advertisement without even trying. It's kind of like how in Robocop where the OCP funds the cops while also protecting the criminals creating a self contained source of income, it's almost feels like one big corporate scam except at least OCP are actually amusing. I would probably talk about the left leaning politics and cancel culture too, but I feel that would just make this blog longer than it needs to be and I am looking at it from a media discussion angle. Either way, these Twitter Whores love to promote themselves while indirectly promoting people they dislike in a condescending way despite those very same people probably even knowing that they are getting lots of attention. COVID 19 has really made dislike these things even more since Twitter I used more than I normally did and exposed me to this more. I had no conventions to break up the pace from all this and special events were rare. It's just made me more jaded and cynical.

Now this next topic is the biggest reason why I dislike media discussion on the internet: critical immunity. Critical immunity has destroyed any form of faith or hope I had in internet communities. What is critical immunity you ask? Well it's a piece of media that never gets attacked or criticized and are so rare to see get any slander to the point where you wonder if that thing is an alien artefact rather than a piece of media. I would list examples but I think you have the idea. With this whole thing I got to wonder, what is even the point of an online discussion anymore? The whole point of online discussion was to not have people act like the way they did in school and in real life yet the online people I used to think were like "me" are just that. I just hate this whole "perfection" mentality that looking for flaws is viewed as heresy like going against some kind of religious cult group. I am going to tell you something shocking: Finding flaws in your favourite media does not mean you dislike it nor does it ruin your wellbeing. Flaws can vary in how much you can enjoy media and some are bigger than others, but acting like your favourite work has none is basically just naivety. We are only human after all so it makes sense for the media that humans to create to have flaws like humanity does. Everyone makes mistakes no matter how big or small they are. Perfection is boring and something I can't connect with. If perfect media does exist, I would probably find it really boring because it was probably designed by an alien not a human. It's funny because critically immune media tend to have fans who act like they are in an alien hive mind. Before I continue off this point, I want to mention a huge pet peeve about online communities I had for some time, and that is people hardly going out of their way to look up new media and expanding their horizons. I don't get it even before I become somewhat adept at examining media, I always thought it was always good to expand one's horizons and have a large pool of different media to form the basis of your critique from. Usually people on social media just talk about the same old mainstream entertainment all the time which is funny because isn't the reason why a lot of people joined online communities is because there is more discussion on more "niche" media? What really gets me is the fanboyism that surrounds it all. If you criticize any critically immune work and say a lesser known piece of media is better, I am willing to bet that you will get ridiculed by the fanboys then inspire a genuine sense of curiosity from these people. I don't know about you, but if someone says a movie is better than my favourite and I have never seen it, I wouldn't attack that person, I would check the damn thing out to see if he was right! I wouldn't attack him for daring to say some slander like a weird cultist. I just find the whole thing discouraging at the end of the day, all this stuff of mainstream media dominance and promoting lesser known media makes you a menace to the internet, makes me question why I bother going out my way to expand my horizons when all I do is get attacked for it. Is this how a superhero feels when they give so much to help the city they protect and all they do is get attacked by the people? I sure do feel it. But hey, at the end of the day, it's not all hopeless since you could find reasonable people but it's rare, but that 0.1% chance is what keeps me going.

Another point I want to address that really annoys me is hated media getting liked and vice versa, I am not against the idea of changing one's thoughts on something, I am no stranger to it. I recently beat Sly 3 Honour Among Thieves and enjoyed it a lot more than I did the first time, but the thing whenever these sorts of things happen, it never feels like it's because people went out of their way to be proven wrong, it felt like there is a hive mind telling them that they are wrong and they have to comply. The fact that there are so many people that suddenly changed their thoughts on something tells me that it just feels like someone told them too. And there are certain people who I will not name that tend to influence how these online communities think. Then I start wondering to myself, wasn't the whole point of going to online communities because people in real life would act like this? The more I think about it, online fandoms just feel like a farce to me.

It's funny really, I used to think people in real life where the people I described when in reality, they are not. In fact, they were people I wanted this whole time but couldn't see it. I watched the 1st Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie with my cousin and brother on Netflix almost a year ago and everyone enjoyed the movie including me. But my cousin had issues with some of the acting and dialogue and didn't particularly enjoy the romantic scenes between Peter and MJ really much. Now go on Twitter, I want you to try to find someone who was honest enough to admit that the movie had its issues like that you might, but I am going to bet over $9000 that the Twitter community wouldn't even dare to say one bad thing about if unless if you looked extremely hard. My brother is a huge fan of the Dragon Ball series and he admits that the series isn't that well written and he just watches the series for the fights, now I want you to go on social media and find someone that honest.

One more thing that annoys me is that people try to find mutuals online through similar interests and tastes, boy I want to tell those people that similar interests don't mean shit, you can have people with similar interests but at the end of day, strength of character is always going to win out. If someone has "good" taste and a poor character than they are always going to be inherently worse than people who you disagree with but are honest people with integrity. Do you want to talk to someone who you disagree with, have an interesting discussion and don't mind your opinions or someone who is an asshole who can't handle any form of criticism? I know who I would go for.  

And now, this is where everything comes full circle, I joined online fandoms because it was supposed to provide me the media discussion groups that real life couldn't provide me just to find out that people in real life were better all along. You already had inherently better things like how you can actually tell what a person feels through facial expressions and tone of voice. That and people in real life can't act overly crazy and act like an asshole because that in of itself would create a huge scene and gather a lot of unnecessary attention which being anonymous on the internet, you can get away with. So why do I come back to internet fandoms exactly? Why? Simply put the people I live with aren't really interested in the same stuff as I am except my brother, and when I do find people with similar interests they tend to be at conventions which I can only go for one or two days, and making friends at a con to me, seems kind of like a farce because once online conversations start happening, the magic you had with that face to face conversation goes away immediately. I guess you have to plan a meet up or plan a meeting but that is too much of a hassle because I just want to do whatever I want at a con. My brother while having similar interests tend to not be as passionate into media as much as I do, and he is very introverted so he only talks to me unless if he has to. I don't blame him, it's his nature but it doesn't make it any easier for me to avoid online fandoms. My cousin I tend to see on occasion. Then there are some other cousins I have who really into media but haven't seen since 2017 and live really far away from me. Now, there is also the fact that making real friends in real life is simply put, is really goddamn hard. First, you have to meet in the same place at the same time consistently or have some consistent meet up, then you have to make sure you have chemistry when talking to each other, on top of that you have to know the person well enough to even consider if you to be his friend and that requires to hang around for some time, then you hope that he doesn't have any deep dark secrets that if you were to find out could ruin the friendship. It takes too much time where online discussion requires very little effort on my part. Less risk and more chances to talk about what I like, even if more means more garbage. Go to similar groups with similar interests? Well, let's say I have bad experiences with those I want to 2 college course regarding media creation where everyone was into media like I was and like I said with the strength of character point, I couldn't stand how they acted and they annoyed me to no end. I tried to join up with one college club multiple times and those guys are a really dishonest and disinterested in what they did. So I guess, I am in online fandoms because I have rotten luck I suppose. It's funny, some people I have met at cons have better luck than I do. They have a friend group or at least so well off socially that they don't need social media. I envy them. Having some kind of group along the lines of Genshiken would be great because college groups aren't anything like that in real life. It's like Superman, how a person with great power would use it for good. I remember the description of the show got me mad at the time because of how unrealistic it was, now I am just disappointed because finding something like that is going to be hard and take too much effort for something I am not sure is worth it.

In conclusion, I have made it clear that I dislike online fandoms, and while I can't say I love it, the whole thing is basically the fast food of conversation. It's quick and easy where with actual bonds require time and effort which is something I don't have and also due to years of abandonment issues. There are times where online conversations comes together and things actually seem good but they are rare and wish would happen more often. I may have made an entire blog complaining about it, but I can't find a great alternative right now. Maybe someday, I will.

Dead Space 3 Review

 Dead Space 3 Review

I have always really enjoyed Dead Space. The first 2 games I played a lot during my teenage years and I beat them both twice after my first playthroughs. Both of them are probably some of my favourite 3rd person shooters despite them being mislabelled as "survival horror" games but that is for a different time. The 3rd game however is a different story, I beat the game back in 2013 around the time it came out and I don't remember it that well and didn't like it that much, and I have just beaten again for the 2nd time after almost 10 years since I played it and well...I remember why I wasn't big on it.

One more thing I want to address before I get started with the review are the reasons why Dead Space 3 is so derided. It often gets that because it made the series more of an "action game". A criticism the 2nd game also gets but not nearly as much. Basically, action gameplay is the average horror game fan's kryptonite and I always found that weird considering Dead Space as it's very heart is a 3rd person shooter to begin with. As bad as people use that criticism for the later Resident Evil games, with that series it *sort of* made sense considering that RE before RE4 was a game centered around puzzles, exploration and combat whether it'd be avoiding or shooting but Dead Space was always a shooter and I hear this almost every time DS3 gets talked about and I want to address this because I am not talking about it all in this review. Dead Space 3 to me is the very definition of a mediocre game, it's not terrible enough to be aggravating and it's not good enough to stand out in any way. It's a shame since the 1st 2 games were games I really enjoyed while with 3, I have a hard time really saying much positive on it.

I will address the game's biggest flaw: the game completely retools and changes everything about the combat and everything surrounding the gameplay for the worst. The biggest issues is that now, necromorphs take a lot less damage compared to the 1st 2 games. In Dead Space, the most interesting thing about the combat system is that enemies can bit hit in multiple areas and you had to dismember them in order to get the kill. The funny thing that this gameplay idea even holds true for Dead Space Extraction as well. In Dead Space 3, the necromorphs take so little damage to the point where shooting almost feels extremely mindless. Aiming for the limbs isn't nearly as encouraged and enemies will die really fast a lot of the time. Remember how some Halo fans bash Halo Reach because the Covenant took a lot less damage to defeat? It goes double for this game. Enemies don't really require much effort to actually defeat, you often have to shoot them in the arm or leg twice and they go down pretty fast. The game does add enemies mutating after death to compensate for this but it never happens often enough or is done in an interesting way to really stand out. Dead Space 2 at least had a lot of enemy variety and large numbers to make combat encounters really interesting. You had enemies that can slow you down when they hit you, enemies that lunged at you while clinging to walls, enemies that were small, agile, cling to walls and can shoot projectiles where it's weak spots you had to wait to see come out(these enemies only show a few times in this game), the Stalkers where they hide and run away and use cover to flank you(they show up a few times, and they are a joke due to how overpowered the weapons and little damage they take), babies that explode, enemies that can infect corpses, and many others that were often mixed up to make for interesting and dynamic combat encounters where you had to watch your surroundings. DS3 on the other hand, just shoves the same generic enemies at you constantly for 70% of the game with very little variation mix up. Often leading to the same boring enemy encounters where you just shoot mindlessly and they die very quickly. The game does try to add challenge by adding lots of enemies in cramped rooms but that makes the game frustrating due to how many times enemies grab you and how enemies can stunlock you at times. Now the game adds human enemies into the mix, and well, they are nothing to write home about. Their AI is very dumb and they often just run around like idiots, with hitscan weapons forcing you into cover which was something that made Dead Space 1 and 2 stand out from cover shooters at the time because the former avoided that. Rocket launcher enemies is a game of hope you can kill them fast before they take big chunks of your health.

I want to get into the other game's other retooling of gameplay: the semi open world aspect, along with the weapons and resources. The game adds in RPG mechanics as well as sort of an open world which at times feels like a precursor to the open world games of the 8th gen. The open world doesn't really feel like anything I want to explore since I never felt there was any need to explore due to the issues I will now mention. The weapons and resources. Dead Space 1 and 2 and some great and creative weapons. They are up there with the Resistance series when it comes to creative weapons in a sci fi shooter. While I admit, that often used the Plasma Cutter, Line Launcher, Ripper, Pulse Rifle for both games, they all felt very satisfying to use and kept both game's balance in check. Now Dead Space 3 does away with set weapons to use and upgrade and now gives you a 2 weapon limit as well as letting you create your own weapons. While this is an interesting idea in theory, I feel the game isn't as experimental with weapon creating as it wants you to be because first you got the before mentioned enemy health, and lack of enemy mix up problem but now it adds all these pointless RPG systems that adds more clutter but doesn't add anything to the overall game. You don't need to be experimental because enemies are too easy to kill and some weapon combos are so broken that you don't need to aim for the limbs, all you need to do is just push the fire button and enemies can easily be killed. Now, the central pillar of DS combat is gone. You don't even want to be experimental because weapons creating is a huge hassle that you aren't even sure is worth it because some weapon combos are average to borderline broken. The resource management itself is just pointless clutter too. The game wants you to upgrade your Rig, and craft items as well as upgrade weapons, and you are often better off just crafting items since it's easier than saving resources to upgrade your Rig. The node and currency system from DS1 and 2 had much more decision making. With nodes you had to worry about upgrading your RIG and your weapons, and also you had special doors that gave you more loot if you were to use them but you risk losing a chance to upgrade weapons and your RIG. With the currency, you had to choose between ammo, health packs or possibly get a new weapon and you only had so much money. With DS3, it's just me pressing the x button to picking things to get resources I don't know anything about and there is no decision making. It's like Resident Evil 8 where you can hold everything and you don't have to worry about what you can or cannot carry.

Another reason why I didn't like this game that much at the time was because of how "long" it was and it isn't technically that long, it's only 10 hours. But the game feels padded. You spend the first chapters in space and not even on the planet where the plot takes place where Dead Space 1 had mystery to keep the player intrigued and whether or not the characters can survive the Ishimura and Dead Space 2 had you fight to survive in a necromorph outbreak, DS3 just takes a while to really get to the main setting and it's funny how the all of the space sections takes place in those first 7 chapters because it never pops up again. So upgrading air supple for the RIG is pointless once you crash land on the planet and the middle section of the game can be pretty dull too considering it's going through the same snowy areas and rooms constantly. Chapter 18 in particular felt like it went on longer than it needed to. I will give the game credit where in Chapter 8 when you crash land is quite tense section where you have to manage Isaac's body heat while also having no way point, so you had to rely on landmarks and piece together where you are and what do without freezing to death. It's easily the best part of the game, I wonder what could've been if the whole game did this.

I will talk about the story here and it's not terrible but not great either. The love triangle is really bad and Norton is a terrible character who acts like a dick a lot of the time and it's there to create conflict, and it's weird how DS2, Ellie and Isaac just hooked up and then a timeskip happens and Isaac has went through lots of problems since. I don't know what is it with games and these timeskips. Whenever the game would go into detail regarding the lore of the series, it's actually pretty interesting. I will also give the game credit for having the best villain in the series through Jacob Danik. He's not great and he makes classic villain mistakes like not killing the heroes himself when he clearly had the chance but Simon Templeman's performance does elevate him a lot. That and he's the only villain in the series that actively gets in Isaac's way and also acts more proactive where DS1 and 2's villains never really did anything to make the player and Isaac hate them. Danik taunts you and actively talks down to Isaac and he often gets the drop on Isaac too, he's more involved in the story compared to previous DS villains. Ellie's fake out was dumb and ruined any development Isaac could've had. Michael Carver while an interesting foil to Isaac on paper, don't interact with each other enough to have any real connection. Coop he is there more apparently but I have no idea if it fleshes out their relationship more.

In conclusion, Dead Space 3 is not terrible nor is it good. It's just "there" to me. It is pretty lame that the there couldn't be a great trilogy of 3rd person shooters through Dead Space but best 2 out of 3 is fine. I can also rank Extraction as a very good spin off. I will give DS3 credit that it doesn't really ruin the series in any way. It's not as bad as certain other reviled games in popular franchises but I can see why I never played this as much as 1 and 2.