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.

Why I Watch English Anime Dubs

 

Why I Watch English Anime Dubs

Alright, I have been pretty vocal about my English Anime Dub defending and like with the Full Metal Alchemist write up I did back in December, with certain Anime topics I feel passionate about, I will most likely write a blog of some kind as a piece to keep on the record. In case I wanted to sum up everything I feel about that said topic.

 

First, I want to go over my experience with Anime Dubs. In the early to late 00s, I watched a lot of TV, in fact, I watched more TV than I did playing video games. It's the opposite now, and in fact I don't watch TV at all and while I watch shows, it's not on TV. The point is, I watched lots of cartoons and anime in the early to late 00s. And guess what? My method of watching anime in that type period was? You guessed it English Dubs, and this comes to my first point. English Dubs are pretty much made to expand the audience of an anime. Guess what? Not everyone enjoys reading subs and do you really expect kids too? Kids hated reading at school so do you expect them to go on their TV and expect them to read subtitles when watching TV? Yeah exactly. It doesn't even end there either, I remember years ago, that my cousin watched Gantz O on Netflix and he refused to watched it subtitled and this made me realize there are lots of people like him that English Dubs' markets are basically made for. I am pretty sure Netflix anime wouldn't be half as popular, if the service didn't have a dub and sub available at the same time. It opens a wide audience for a series, movie or OVA. Dub haters can keep insulting Dubs for their supposedly terrible acting but do you honestly think, the average person who wants to be entertained watching anime and hates reading subs really goddamn cares? They overlook this and it annoys me to no end. Then there is people who have visual disabilities which just gives English Dubs more of a reason to exist.

 

I get complaining about what 4Kids did with their Dubs and they changed a lot of the stuff and while not everything they did was a hit, their Dub of the original Yugioh series was a huge hit and made the series way more popular. You can talk about censorship sure, but really what matters is that a show becomes more popular through Dubbing and while their method was questionable, in the end they made the series way more popular. I am willing to bet a good majority of people probably heard of Yugioh was because of the 4Kids Dub. And goes into the bigger picture here, Dubs regardless of quality, if they expand a show's audience is what matters. If they did that, I consider the Dub to fulfill its purpose.

Now another reason why I watch English Dubs is because in some ways, I find it hard to concentrate when reading especially on a digital screen. I find it hard to get through novels and I have a hard time going through comics that have walls of text, so I dislike the idea of watching a visual medium in motion where I have to read subtitles. I find it hard to pay attention and I find it boring because I don't even have to watch the damn show, I can mute audio entirely and read the bottom two inches of the screen and I am getting the mostly the same experience. In fact, listening to the anime's background music could ruin my concentration in some ways, I could miss lines, and I always have to play a game of, "please don't miss that line, please don't". And why would I want to read subs during an action sequence? I want to enjoy the action and the spectacle. Reading subs would just ruin that and make me look at the bottom two inches of the screen instead of viewing the action. I can imagine kids watching Dragon Ball Z or a shounen and they have to worry about not missing some random line while the characters are duking it out or any show with action. Some shows like Legend of the Galactic Heroes, literally have the subtitles literally overlap with the characters' names, is this supposed to help in anyway? I will make it clear, I do watch subbed anime but that is because there are some great anime with no English Dubs like the before mentioned Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Rose of Versailles and Ashita No Joe. That is a different topic though.

Now I want to address the arguments Sub fanboys use. The first one being, they are Japanese, having them speak English makes no sense and isn't "realistic". First of all, anime characters have a race neutral look and the characters don't look like their nationality to begin with. That and I wanted to say this for some time, but if you were theoretically in Japan and heard two people speak Japanese, would you really for the life of you, see words pop up in front of you translating what they are saying? No. Them speaking English is unrealistic but seeing words pop up and an invisible translator pop up isn't my definition of "realism" either. Next they like to act like the subtitles are the be all end all and it's the most true to the "original" script? And my response to this is? How do you know this? Unless if the director of an anime disproves of the Dub or unless if there is general distain by the production team, I doubt some random dude translating Japanese words, is "God" and isn't someone that isn't fallible. It all feels too vague isn't specific enough, and seems like a case by case basis. "Japanese actors have more nuance". I hate this one. I feel like you need to actually speak the language to understand something like this, and it really feels like weebs are just trying too hard to sound smart. What annoys me is that they never explain how they are nuanced. What on Earth are the Japanese actors even doing that are so nuanced? Every time, I hear subbed anime I think everyone is voiced by the same 3-5 people. I must be missing these nuances because I don't get them. These guys can barely go into detail as to why English actors are so "terrible" and I am supposed to be believe you are voice acting experts now? Sure, yeah. I will also mention an argument they like to mention is that characters are less "annoying" in Japanese. What annoys me is that they never explain this and I am always end up being like, "no shit". Reading something annoying and not understanding what they are saying is going to be tolerable than understanding what they are saying by default. Hearing someone say stupid crap will always be more grating because depending on how good your memory is, and depending on how it's said, it will pop out more. Hearing an insult towards you won't hit as hard as reading one because the stuff being heard is right around you is harder to ignore. Would Jason's terrible fear monologues from Resident Evil Infinite Darkness be better in another language? Reading the words isn't going to be as cringe and actually hearing him say out loud since he is saying it and you would have to plug your ears to ignore him.

I will address a small point here. It may feel like I am talking in the wind, but it's vocal minority anime fans who hate English Dubs. Going to cons and going to voice actor Q&As and seeing lots of people there is enough to remind me that people who hate English Dubs are an extremely vocal minority.

I also have an attachment to dub actors, not as people, no, but their craft. I really enjoy hearing them despite how overused some actors are. I really enjoy Crispin Freeman, Steve Blum, Jay Michael Tatum, Jameson Price, Wendee Lee, Kari Whalgren, Richard Epcar, Robert MacCollum and so on. I generally tend to enjoy hearing them in anything they are in which will not transition to my next point. I notice Dub haters tend to attack them for overusing the same actors but I also notice western cartoons getting a free pass. I don't get why. Cartoons use the same actors as much as anime dubs do some actors even overlap like Crispin Freeman and Steve Blum. It just feels like a weird double standard to me. Phil Lamarr, Kevin Michael Richardson and Karry Payton voice almost every black person in a cartoon. Cartoons use the same female voice actors a lot as much as anime dubs as well. Jennifer Hale, Tara Strong, and Grey Griffin are pretty much almost in everything. Laura Bailey and Kari Whalgren even overlaps with both as well. It's just bizarre. That and weebs like to act like cartoon voice acting is way better than anime dub acting but never go into detail. Is it because cartoons aren't recorded in Japanese first so they are just better by default because there's no Japanese actors? Ugh. I think it's best to just say that, that voice acting in America isn't super popular unless if it's a big project and despite Netflix's best efforts to try bringing in new VAs that no one ever really gives them enough credit for. On a side note, as obnoxious as I find anime shoving in cute stuff in everything particularly with girls, I always felt Kari Whalgren, Cristina Vee, Laura Bailey, Tara Platt, and Luci Christian to me pull it off  better than when Japanese women voice teenagers but I consider that to be a personal preference as much as I want to spend time explain why this already a long write up as it is.

Here is another thing that English Dubs get overlooked for: Bad Dubs and entertainment value. If you want to watch a bad show, is good voice acting really going to save it? It's best if the dub and voice acting also be bad to add to the entertainment value. Hearing bad voice acting and makes the awful anime more fun to go through than reading it. Cyber City 808 isn't half as fun without being as stupid as it is. Do I need to remind you of the "bite off your fuckin dick" line. Like, it's fucking gold. Hell, all though not terrible on a technical level Dragon Ball Z Super Android 13 is much more entertaining with the English Dub than without. Android 13 is a boring villain but giving him that fun cowboy character elevated him a good deal. It just made a boring movie, really fun because they made everything so dumb with trash talk lines like, "don't you lecture me with your $30 dollar haircut, Goku dies". Or that weird part where the series gets philosophical with a line where Android 13 is like, "Free will? Pitiful humans, war, segregation, hatred is that what you done with your free will, boy" which is weird but funny.

Dubs with certain franchises and settings is the next point I want to make. I like funny accents in almost anything which is probably why I like Black Lagoon and Baccanno's dubs as much as I do. They are so over the top that they elevate shows that I deem to be mostly decent. Hellsing's dub is the best thing about it, the show is nothing special is just dumb entertainment at most but the dub elevates it. Crispin Freeman is great but the Major's War monologue is quite good. Jameson Price's performance really makes the Count of Monte Cristo in Gankutsuou really standout as a larger than life charismatic character. Average and boring adaptations like Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood are elevated with the late Ed Blaylock's performance as King Bradley. He steals every scene in that series and makes Bradley even cooler. I also like to watch certain franchises like the before mentioned Dragon Ball in English and this might be something lot of people agree with me on but I am not exactly big on Goku being voiced by a 50 year old woman. It just really seems out of place and weird, I get the guy is a kid at heart but the guy is a full grown adult, and it doesn't suit him because women usually tend to voice little boys and it just seems obvious that a 50 year old is voicing Goku. What really annoys me is that she voices male character in Goku's family including Goten, Gohan and Bardock. This isn't a Metal Gear Solid situation where Big Boss and Solid Snake are clones, the former are completely different characters and how does she even remotely fit Bardock in any way? I don't see it.

In conclusion, I have covered mostly everything I wanted to say about English Dub in anime for a very long time and I now have some kind of recording to put it on.

Resistance Fall of Man and Resistance 3 Story Comparison

 

Resistance Fall of Man and Resistance 3 Story Comparison

This write up sounds a bit weird, a story comparison between 2 FPS games? A genre that never needed to rely on story to engage players to begin with? Sounds weird, right? Well, the thing is, both games came out around a time where story was slowly becoming more common in FPS games. There was Half Life, Marathon and Unreal yes, but the 00s is where storytelling in FPS games really started to get out of hand. I won't go into too much detail on this but I feel Resistance Fall of Man and Resistance 3 both tell their stories in complete different ways. I think the former does a better job at telling it's story than the latter, is more enjoyable, and doesn't get in the gameplay as much. Which is strange because whenever Resistance discourse comes up at times, there are some people who really like 3's story or at least prefer it's more "personal" story compared to the "military" story of the 1st two games. I just find this to be so weird. I wanted to keep to make this it's own write up because if I included it in my R:FOM review, it would've made it too long.

Now, I will just talk about the series briefly before starting the comparison. I really enjoy Fall of Man and 3. Both games to me are some of the best FPS games the 7th gen has to offer especially in a time where the genre was in a very "strange" phase. And the 2nd game? Well, to avoid sounding like a ranting madman, I am not a fan of it, I played it again recently for the first time recently since 2009 and I was appalled by how bad it was. Everything about it felt like a poor man's Call of Duty campaign. Playing that game was like watching someone you respected sell out to a crowd you don't like. Everything about that game felt so "anti Insomniac" to me, and a 2 year timeskip after the opening level where Nathan Hale's team of super soldiers are already established was already enough of a bad sign for me to not to continue with the story. I might play on Easy mode and maybe get more fun of it that way and update this write up if I ever do beat, but I am not sure. Now the 3rd game is great. While taking a step back in some ways from Fall of Man, the game more than makes up for it's weapon feel and super satisfying combat. When it comes to having weapons that feel great and hitting the enemies, the game is a huge improvement over Fall of Man, and there's more environment variety too. For me, choosing between R:FOM and 3 is like choosing between Max Payne 1 and Max Payne 2.

But I rambled long enough, time to get to the point: the stories. Fall of Man's story to me was a simple story told well enough to keep me interested. It's not writing masterclass or anything, far from it but the story in that game is told well enough and doesn't get in the way of gameplay. It's sort of the reason why I tend to jump into Fall of Man randomly while as much as I like the 3rd game, I don't jump into as much. The story in Fall of Man is told through these documentary style cutscenes probably to make up for the fact that the Insomniac couldn't actively put in full on cutscenes due to budgeting most likely and I feel it adds to the game's charm and setting. Kind of like Max Payne's comic book cutscenes. The alternate WW2 setting with the documentary cutscenes makes it feel a bit like watching a WW2 documentary but not entirely. I feel it adds to the mystery aspect to what the first game is going for. Since the whole story is basically Racheal Parker's recollection of the Chimeran in invasion of Europe and her recollection of a mysterious man named Nathan Hale. Back a good couple of years ago, I saw some constantly attack Nathan Hale for being a "bland and boring" character, the same usual bargain bin critique but to my response, "isn't that the point?" The story isn't told from Nathan's perspective, it's Parker's and Nathan Hale is supposed to be a quiet and mysterious soldier that people only saw but never actually celebrated his actions to how ambiguous his existence was. It's what Halo 3's marketing campaign went for except it's actually is the plot here. Hale is a legend or myth by definition. The Chimera themselves are mysterious too since any documents on their existence were wiped out when the game started. On a side note, it is nice for an alien invasion story where the military isn't portrayed as complete and utter idiotic buffoons. The best part of these cutscenes and that they can be skipped and Fall of Man still keeps you in the action. It's a story is told in an interesting way and doesn't get in the way. I also really like how, the game also has an in universe explanation as to why the main character talks during cutscenes and not gameplay considering gameplay is just playing out Hale's battles huge plot dumps weren't happening. In fact the whole game is basically playing out what Racheal described what was going in the cutscene giving the player enough context for the levels.

Now I will get to Resistance 3, while I have bashed this game for having cutscenes that get in the way, it's not as bad as in other games like Wolfenstein 2 or hell, Machine Games Wolfenstein in general. I still feel like wannabe City 17 Opening in R3 kind of takes too long to get to the action for me. Some of the down time moments where the characters are going through major problems were just boring to me because I didn't really care for any of the characters. The walking sections just didn't add enough to the story for me and I prefer R:FOM's way of getting to the action fast. This isn't my major issue with the story in R3, my big issue is just how bad the story is in general. People praise R3's story for being more "personal", I feel the story just fails to keep me invested. It may be "personal" but that doesn't make it good. I also feel like the whole post apocalyptical setting and the world being destroyed is extremely generic and typical especially when the 1st game and even the 2nd at least portrayed the military as people who actually could stand a chance against the alien force. I remember some Resistance fans complaining about this change in setting and I agree with them. The biggest issue I have is how little I care for Joseph Cappelli. His motivation is "personal" yes but I don't feel very attached to his family and I get this isn't a movie or TV series where you have downtime but I feel like more could've been done. Now the biggest problem I have is everything after. Cappelli and Malakov have very little character interactions in general. It doesn't even make sense for Cappelli not to talk during cutscenes at least with Hale he was quiet and was playing out his fights. The lack of interactions just makes the 2 super boring. And the funny thing is, Fall of Man even had an actual dynamic with Cartwright and Hale. Cartwright being the witty funny guy who is tough and likes to tease Hale while the latter was more stoic and collected. I'd argue Cartwright had more character in sniper rifle than the entirety of R3's cast. The lack of interactions makes Malkov's death mean very little when he dies. The story also makes some dumb turns too. Like how Cappelli tells Charlie Tent, a guy he knew for 8 hours to check on his family because he had a bad dream. The former had no proof that his son was in danger and asks a guy who wasn't even his friend for help. There also that extremely poorly done foil villain late game where he was once a member of SRPA like Cappelli where the latter chose a quiet family life the former chose a life of war and survival of the fittest. The problem here is that the villain only shows up for one level and since Cappelli never talks and says anything in gameplay, there's nothing to contrast with him here, they only interact at the end of the level and this isn't the Last of Us where it uses it's foils more effectively with Joel and how each character him and Ellie meet represents certain sides of him. Here, it's just a guy a crazy bloodthirsty asshole fighting a guy who is mute one moment and not the next. Humanity fighting each other this much doesn't even make sense considering what comes after, more on that later. Before I get to my next issue with R3's story I will say the cutscenes of Cappelli walking in the snow and him making the speech before he charges into the terraformer to be pretty well done due it being shot well and having very little dialogue and for how hopeless it will be. Then the story starts getting dumb again by first of all establishing the Chimera as a boring Invincible Villain who loses all the time, but come back stronger than ever like the Templars from Assassin's Creed and the Light from Young Justice. What annoys me here is that the beginning of the game, it was said that SRPA was wiped out by the Chimera yet for some reason I am supposed to believe that a depowered Cappelli and Charlie Tent and his group are supposed to be strong enough to take down the force that killed a super solider army? That is just nonsense. The Chimera took over the world apparently, wiped out the military and they get beaten by a few humans? Ugh.

In conclusion, while I still really enjoy both games, I am surprised by how bad I find R3's story. It's not bad enough to ruin the game, but it's just too poorly written to me. R:FOM was a simple story told in an interesting. R3 was a "personal" story told very poorly. Execution is what matters and it seems online discourse either forgets or tries to ignore it.

 

Resistance Fall of Man Review

 

Resistance Fall of Man Review

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The 00s was an interesting period for fps games. You had stuff like Solider of Fortune and No One Lives Forever in the year 2000. And then you had stuff like Serious Sam The First Encounter, Return to Castle Wolfenstein and of course Halo Combat Evolved in 2001. With Halo CE's release and later Call of Duty 4, the fps genre would have a strange period of having 2 weapon limit and regen health shooters being the norm. Now, I want to talk about a game that came out in a time where the norm wasn't full set yet and instead of the Halo and CoD way of doing things it combines aspects of 90s shooters like Half-Life and Doom, the Halo series and also the WW2 setting of games like Call of Duty at the time and that is Resistance Fall of Man. I see this game get a lot of hate in from some people and it has a cult following in others. I fall into the latter.

I feel a lot of the reviews for this game that I have seen both written and video form doesn't really do this game a whole lot of justice. The game does borrow a lot from other shooters before where unlike something like say, Duke Nukem Forever where it only borrows stuff from the past 15 years after Duke Nukem 3D's release because the devs thought it would be interesting, this game borrows from them and makes it for a interesting and unique experience combining the old and the new.

Now, I will talk about how the game does a good job at combining the old and the new. The game takes the ability to hold all your weapons from Doom and Half Life while adding a Radial Menu to select weapons, not too different from Insomniac's previous series Ratchet and Clank. Which is a system I think the Doom reboot games' console versions adopted. It also takes elements from the Halo series like the partially regenerating health, the ability to throw multiple grenades, a melee attack and some enemy types being similar to the Flood. It doesn't end there either, it also takes the iron sights from the Call of Duty series as well but unlike that series, you are still accurate to varying degrees when shooting from the hip all though it will be easier to kill enemies more efficiently when using ADS.

All of this combines for a game with combat that feels unique in a lot of ways. With the health system, it's about being careful to duck behind cover while also choosing when to go out of cover and starting taking out enemies out in the open. It's not a full on cover shooter but you can't just rush in and kill everything in sight by holding down the fire button either. The enemy AI also plays a role in this, more on that later. An issue with this system that I do think Halo and even CoD to some degree do better is that in those games, the player is given an audio cue and in CoD's case an extremely on the nose, "you are hurt to cover" warning on when to hide and wait to for health to regenerate. In Resistance, you aren't given that and I think this could lead to why some dislike the game. In R:FOM, knowing when you are in critical health is like driving a car where you looking in the mirror and driving on the road at the same time. I don't mind it and it never bothered me but some people would probably rush in blindly and not even know they had one bar of health left. A way to fix this is to probably have Nathan Hale either have a breathing sound to know when the player need to recover a health block and then the screen turns yellow maybe to have the player know that they are at critical health.

I mentioned the enemy AI before, and I am shocked by how much enemy AI still holds up in this game, this is something not even the Resistance Sequels really improved on. It's better than enemy AI in games today. The Chimeran Hybrids will, hide behind cover, throw grenades to flush you out, rush and flank you, and move out of the way when shooting at them and even dive out of the way when the player throws grenades. They will also operate turrets when they are nearby and the Steelheads that pop up later do a good job at keeping the player on his toes. This game's AI is up there with the Replica Soldiers from FEAR, Killzone 2 and 3's Helghast and Halo's Covenant to me. It helps do a good job at making firefights interesting and dynamic because the player not only has to watch his health but the Chimera themselves too.

There's a wide array of enemy types in this game as well which is something once again the Resistance Sequels don't really improve on. There's the before mention Hybrids and Steelheads, Angel, Stalker, Leapers, Menials, Howler, Traphunter, Slipskull, and Grey Jack, and Titan among others. They even combine several enemy types at once in some levels which the players on his toes even with the smart enemies they have to deal with.

Now of course, I have to mention the weapons, even people who dislike the game can't say they dislike the weapons. And boy there's a lot of them but I want to touch a specific aspect of the weapons that not many talk about and that is how much the game makes you switch weapons. Yup Doom Eternal may have gotten a crap load of shit for making the player actively switched weapons but this game I feel, did it first at least I can recall. In Resistance, you can't just Carbine, and Bullesye your way through the game, there's going to be points where you are going to use a different weapon to make firefights easier for you, on top of that you get multiple grenade types too and you will need to use all of them throughout the game in order to beat it. For example, for the Slipskull enemies can be take out with either using the Bullesye tag or you can use the shotgun. For the Grey Jack you can either use the shotgun or use the Sniper to take them out. When there are hordes of enemies, it's best to use grenades to take them out because standard enemies take a lot of damage before they die which I feel is a good thing because their AI can shine more. The Leapers can be beaten with the Bullesye, Carbine or Shotgun. The Carbine's grenade launcher can come in handy during tougher fights at at least if there is a lone Steelhead or multiple. The Auger is at it's best when there are lots of enemies behind cover. The Air Fuel Grenades are best for narrow corridors. The game also does away with certain weapons sharing ammo like lots of 90s fps games and instead gives you limited ammo for each gun, which means you are going to have be careful on when to use powerful weapons. The Hailstorm's Turret while powerful, is something you have to be careful when using because ammo is limited. I will also mention that there are guns to unlock after the 1st playthrough and this is a novel concept to this day especially in FPS games. While I did find some weapons useful like the Bubble Grenades, Reapers, and Mine Launcher, the rest I found useless. I just wanted to point out that this is something more games can explore given the current gaming industry, I doubt it will happen ever again, outside of a Ratchet and Clank game.

Now, finally, I want to mention the "hard difficulty" that I hear about this game. And I find this baffling, I beat the game as a 12 year old kid and I found it mostly manageable, if not easy. Compared to other hard console shooters like Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, console Medal of Honors, and Black. This game feels a lot more fair by comparison. In those above mentioned games, you are basically a tank living off borrowed time. You can't reliably avoid damage and the enemies use hitscan weapons pretty much meaning that if an enemy attacks you, the hit is guaranteed. And you pretty much have to keep getting hit hoping you find enough health packs to get to the end of a level or die a lot and memorize the level to minimize damage. Resistance, this is not the case, the enemies use projectile weapons and attacks can mostly be dodged if not entirely. You have a wide array of different weapons and grenades to choose from that can help level the opposition. Different weapons that aren't generic hitscan. And I want to address another another thing about the difficulty and that is the "checkpoints". Again, like the before mentioned games, if you die in them, it's a level restart. Resistance does have checkpoints but it doesn't baby you either, if you are good enough at the game, and understand what I mentioned here, levels can be breezed on Normal Difficulty. And Resistance isn't crazy with it's checkpoint, if there is a challenging section, there will be a checkpoint before that. It's not like games like Timespilttes 2 where checkpoint placements are questionable, very few and get very little health packs. In Resistance, the checkpoints are plentiful enough and you get enough health packs to get by a level. It just baffles me how this game gets attacked for it's difficulty while the above mentioned games do not. Don't get me wrong there are some bad sections here and there like fighting the Titans, that one awkward platforming level and the opening level in the Nottingham Base mission but generally, this game is fair when compared to those above mentioned games.

In conclusion, I feel this game is quite a great time and Insomniac did a great job for making an FPS game for the time in over a decade. They made a game that did an excellent job at combing every aspect of old and new shooter design. I feel if this game came out now, with some tweaks, I can picture this game being loved but of course, it came out a year before Call of Duty 4 and we all know what happened and how Insomniac wanted to appeal to those people with this game's sequel.

 

Ryu Hayabusa and the Importance of Foil Characters

 

Ryu Hayabusa and the Importance of Foil Characters

 

I recently played through Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 on the recently released Master Collection and I was quite surprised how bad the stories in those games were even for action game standards. And I get it, you don't play NG for the story and the devs of those games basically take the John Carmack Doom(1993) approach to story telling but at the same time, I feel like if they are going to have cutscenes, it tells me that they are attempting to have some kind of narrative, and I feel outside of brief breaks from gameplay, the cutscenes and storytelling in these games fail on a basic narrative level. For the sake of brevity, I'll get to the point of this piece. Ryu Hayabusa while having a great design and in some ways an interesting reserved, "man of few words" personality. He has no interesting foils to contrast him with to make these personality traits more interesting and as a result, every time he is on screen in a cutscene in these games, I often find myself bored half the time or just viewing the cutscene for the spectacle after just beating a boss.

I'll define a foil character for those who don't know, a foil character is a character is someone that highlights and contrasts traits with another character.

As overused of an example as this going to be and as much as I think he is an overpraised character. There is a reason why the Batman and Joker rivalry is so popular. Batman is a stoic, serious and at times angry dude while the Joker is happy, psychotic, and is insane. Both of them have poplar opposite personality traits that play off each other and create for interesting scenarios. For example, Joker can kill an innocent person while fighting Batman and laughs and acts crazy while doing it and this can bring out Batman's morals of not killing and push him ever so closer to losing his stoic demeanor and snapping but Batman never does because he believes that is a line he will never cross.

Now let's look at both Ninja Gaiden games, in NG1, who is a foil to Ryu? Racheal? She gets kidnapped and is a liability. Ayame? All she does is watch and narrate. Doku? He barely shows up and gets killed twice and barely has anything to contrast with Ryu. Alma? Same deal. Then there a bunch of other characters so forgettable(maybe outside of Muramasa) that they are almost not really worth mentioning. And that Murai twist of him being the villain the whole time was dumb, really, really dumb. The man is a trains people at day and is a secret Tyrannical Emperor at night? What?

Ninja Gaiden 2 does show some steps in the right direction with the character of Genshin being a rival of sorts to Ryu but the problem with him is that I am not sure what he really highlights about Ryu or what his motivations are. He just comes off as an obstacle for the player rather than a foil and the rest of the characters are as forgettable as the first game's cast.

Now to use a video game example on how to use a foil character and as overpraised as this game's story is, Devil May Cry 3 does use the character of Vergil very well for the purposes of narrative and gameplay. While Dante is loud, brash and obnoxious. Vergil is reserved, and stoic. It helps show highlight Dante's personality and makes it pop all the more. Platinum Games, even adopted this dynamic to varying degrees with their games like with Byonnetta 1 and 2, Metal Gear Rising, Wonderful 101, Anarchy Reigns, and even Vanquish to some degree.

While in NG1 and 2's cutscenes, it's usually Ryu talking to a bunch of characters with nothing really stand out about him.

To use another gaming example, there's a reason why Master Chief and Cortana's dynamic works so well. Master Chief is the quiet borderline mechanical super soldier while Cortana is the upbeat AI providing levity to the situations Chief is in. There's a reason why this dynamic works while Chief's borderline non existent interactions with the Arbiter don't. With the latter, Arbiter has little if no personality traits to contrast with the Chief and every time they are together, it borderline puts me to sleep with Marty O Donnell's and Michael Salvatori music the only thing keeping me awake. Cortana and Chief's dynamic highlights their respective traits more in Halo 4 where Chief is the machine despite being made of flesh while Cortana is more human despite being mechanical.

But back to NG, Ryu Hayabusa is basically Arbiter and Chief in Halo 3 but over the course of 2 games.

And before everyone starts jumping on me, I am not really asking for NG to be a well written story, I am just asking there to be a character to show off how cool Ryu actually can be as a character instead of being surrounded by boring cardboard cutouts. Maybe have a character whose motivations and personality contrasts with Ryu and make it less vague this time.

And I feel like I should address that stoic characters often get a bad rep but I think a good dynamic and a good foil can make them enjoyable and endearing characters.

I used to take foil characters for granted and while I did think they were important, I do realize their importance more than ever now in how the lack of them can make a story boring, intentionally bad or not.