Recent games that excelled or flopped far past their hype

Here's a list of games that I think either flopped badly or excelled ridiculously compared to the hype. This editorial is likely one of the most biased since this is based around hype I gave it as it'd just be more difficult to combine all the general hype into this list. Plus there are plenty of super hype games that I've missed out on like God of war 3, Halo, or Dark souls. So here is a list of what I do have, both good and bad. All of these games are somewhat recent, so don't expect anything beyond the past couple of years.

THE GOOD:


Saints Row 3
I kind of thought the GTA style stuff would be dying down. I know the more recent entries have been well praised, but I kept thinking it was only a matter of time. Then I saw saints row 3, and thought it had some potential. GTA with stronger focus on humor and gang warfare. Sounded fun. Fun is an understatement when the game struck me like an asteroid crash of entertainment once I had rented it. I begged my mom, if under bad circumstances there was only one thing she could get me for Christmas, make it saints row 3. Afterall, I had been playing it for hours of almost non-stop fits of laughter and joy. This game was just fantastic. I enjoyed the hilarious voice dialogue, the driving, the missions were always exciting and cartoony, and of course it was built over an already long successful sandbox formula that I thought would eventually go stale. I stopped thinking that about GTA style games after saints row. It seems they do still have a long life span as long as you have a good direction with it.

Skyrim
Skyrim caught every RPG fan's dreams. Skyrim was a part of the super famous elder scrolls series, which I was about to buy for the awesome idea of fighting a dragon in first person sword combat... when I found out the series never had dragons. Luck hit, and it turned out Skyrim's main hype was dragons. I started looking forward to it to, but I thought it would only go down as a rent only game. I just wasn't that much into RPGs, and I started doubting Skrim would change my mind. Again, renting the game first showed me beauty beyond expectations. While the combat wasn't perfect, it was far more entertaining than other RPGs. The level up system was very interesting and rewarding with a sense of using your powers to build them up. The best thing that sold me though, was the world. Once I got off the tutorial mission, I got lost before I completed the first real task. I walked out into a lake, caught fish, climbed mountains, fought wolves, found ancient artifacts, cleared a cave, and then died at the hands of a master vampire after I cleared out most of his tower. Restarted at the bottom of the tower, left it, and THEN I found out how to use the map to get to my first mission. I was actually really close, just had to pass a river and I was there at the local village. I turned back, and got lost on purpose all over again because being lost was never so much damn fun. I had to own the game after that, and while I don't go losing myself as much I am always amazed at what new features, weapons, or story twists pop up. There is a lot to do in skyrim, enough that somebody who plays it like 5 hours a day could get by on the game for almost the entire console generation. Skyrim deserves far more hype than it could possibly get.

Bulletstorm
One of my most anticipated FPS games... how did it fall to the background? I actually went for months without it, after I was so excited for it. It was supposed to be a blast from the past, and show mainstream shooters why they can't be as good as the older shooters. Yet I just passed it by, possibly even buying a more popular shooter instead. I can't remember clearly. I got it on 2011's Easter though, and it was far better than I thought it would be even when I was hyped. I believed the reviews when they said "bad story" and "bad dialogue" or "a lacking multiplayer". Well once I bought the game, I found out they were not only dead wrong in my eyes, but they had to be playing the wrong game. Bulletstorm did stuff I didn't expect it to, like giving me a tiny but lovable cast, an awesome tropical planet that is one big wrecked tourist attraction, and scripted events that I surprisingly didn't hate. Oh, and I will never forget the disco scene, that alone is worth plenty of my money. The gameplay that I expected to be great, was better. There was an echo mode that added more replay than I thought would exist. The multiplayer is a survivor that's just as much fun to play as the rest of the game, just as long as you don't get bored of your surroundings. The story was not only better than the reviews said, but I was having trouble imagining almost any other shooter competing with it story wise. There were moments when I had some wishes, like for an older health system, or less frustrating challenges, but the game as a whole was so much fun that its biggest sin was having an ending.

Warhammer space marines
I haven't played this in a while, and technically I stopped at like the very last level. Still this game has shocked me, and I just love it. Warhammer is a series I never cared about, because honestly it never got into my path of games. Now it did, so I tried out this 3rd person shooter as it looked interesting. What I didn't expect was a cross of gothic and steampunk art styles, the overall fun gameplay, a decent story with an good twist, a fun multiplayer and survival, and again.... the fun of the whole thing. This game was just a lot better than I could have hoped for, and I can't explain why. I should hate it for the repetitive fighting that feel like a lesser GOW with some shooting tacked on, but it's actually great. I should hate how the characters are so boring, but I actually found their military morals to be rather weird and interesting at the same time. Much like bulletstorm, it gets a lot of unexpected old school things right, and throws in a lot of surprises to keep me enjoying the game. Like the cheesy enemies, amazing yet weird weapons, and a gameplay system that just seems to magically work. It also throws me into a new game universe that I probably should have been more involved in long ago.


THE DISAPPOINTING


Brink
I just have to start this part of the list off with brink. Brink is an odd game that is so amazing, and so sad at the same time. For every cool game that brings back old mechanics like bulletstorm, there are 3 that are put in the hands of incompetent developers who only make the older games and mechanics look bad. This would be one of them. Brink brought in a great combat system, great innovation, fun classes, great maps, a nice art style, and then... nothing else. There are 8 maps, and 3 challenges. Have fun. It'll keep you enjoying the game for 3 whole days if you know how to drag it out. Seriously, who even gave this the green light to go into stores as a completed game? Is this some kind of "test"? If so, they also failed the online department where the game shipped with terribly broken online where everybody lagged as though their internet was choking on its last breath. The game has more unlockables and customization that you can literally spend more time there than you can in the 8 maps. Bottom line is that this game had such an awesome score from a view point, and playing point, but if you wanted a full game... sorry. Modes don't exist, maps are limited, and the online shipped with an "under maintenance" error.

Battlefield 3
Right so I was thinking about putting this up here for the maps and lack of bullet drop as both of those are let downs, but then I realized that it was worse: The entire single player. WTF is up with the single player dice? You took bad story elements from cliche shooters, outright stole CODs formula as well as overdoing parts of it to an almost unplayable point, tack on quick time events, and then don't make sense of it in the end. By don't makes sense, I mean the entire campaign story and gameplay. It's just 2 hours (counting gameplay only) of running around doing more dramatic fighting in places and with people that you have no clue about because the game simply doesn't give you anything. At least in other games it makes it clear that russians have terrorists, or was put in a decent timeline for it to make sense. Here they are just thrown in in addition to a middle eastern terror group that we're not sure is even a terror group. We're just told that, they talk like they have motives, and then we battle russians who are doing.... stuff. WTF!? This is what people were waiting all year for? This is what was marketed to battle the current sales king? By doing what, stealing from it and making it worse? Again, even the multiplayer isn't as good as the hype wanted us to think, with bland maps that just discourage gameplay. What no rural woodlands, or snowy landscapes? No major places that strike us on an epic scale? Just a bunch of boring urban areas with the addition of a park/train area, and an island map? The maps just suck for some reason, and I can't get into this game as much as I want to. On top of that, the hyped engine is actually worse on a destruction level. It just chips chunks of a building away, basic things explode, and almost nothing changes. You can't even wreck but one or two buildings, everything else just gets damaged until you have a bone-like structure, which actually feels like it makes the game worse as the building becomes completely useless to anyone. The multiplayer is still great in general, but the maps just discourage me so much and the campaign is just a joke. There was a fun level in the campaign somewhere, but apart from that it's only good for trophy padding.

Duke Nukem Forever
Much like Brink, this should have been a shooter that helped give balance to all the flooding of the self-destructing military FPS sub-genre. Also like brink, it failed and had the opposite effect of making those games look bad because devs (not gearbox, probably one of the other many devs that took hold of it) chose to ship it in a condition that was blatantly made to fail in the eyes of review scores and to the majority of gamers. It isn't a blast from the past, the king returning, or even fun for its insane weapons. Nope, instead it chooses to ditch its old ideas for new ones that absolutely betray the series. Such as the typical 2 slot weapon system.... on duke nukem..... yeah that's like removing Mario's jump ability. The health system also degraded, and even if you wanted regen health it was a broken system of regen health. Bosses can squash you almost effortlessly, the health takes almost 15 second to start a regen , and it literally contradicts a part of the story. There are also outdated physic puzzles for some reason. It's like this game just shipped to remind us that duke is dead, and someone out there is laughing about it while giving us half-life's puzzles. The only redeeming qualities is the aliens, some of the set pieces and battles were surprisingly fun, and the nostalgic level design was great. It's not a completely trash grade game, but it's just bad.

Dragon's Dogma Demo review

Dragon's Dogma is a game I've been looking forward to for.... actually for almost my entire life if I think about it for a second. I've always been fascinated by RPG worlds, but not the game itself. RPGs create new species, often have cool battles or magic, an epic scale, and the right ones really get a grip on the idea of adventure. However before the current RPG revolution we seem to be going through, the only thing that seemed to exist was battles that either had party and turn based strategy or it was just clicking/button mashing one button for a sword attack/magic zap until someone ran out of health. In other words, all of this awesome world and battle potential lost me at one of the most essential and basic parts of the game: It's combat and a couple of other weird mechanics. Skyrim, Two worlds 2, amalur, etc are helping now, but they aren't completely out into the great combat zone yet. It's still either slashing and blocking with a couple of buttons (skyrim, TW2), or a teaser of a great system (amalur). Dark messiah is an older game that took sword fighting to an awesome style at the time, but it wasn't so adventurous and nothing else happened after it was over. So I've been waiting for a while for something as amazing as dark messiah (or better) was with its world and fighting style, and then as I feel like I've already given up, I see the E3 trailer to dragon's dogma and get it confirmed that it has a strong and unique combat focus. I've been super hyped ever since then, and yesterday I finally got my hands on a demo. So here's what I think
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I turned on the game, edit my character, and launch the prologue. So far, so good. For some reason all the menus look like a monster hunter rip-off. I know capcom made that to, but it still feels a little out of place. Maybe just some fan service to the fanbase? I don't know, maybe just a coincidence. The controls feel confusing at the start. All the right hand face buttons are either attacks or interactions, and the RI/L1 buttons both bring up even more attacks out of the face buttons when held. The R2 button is grab, so that means that just about all the buttons are combat functions or basic interacting commands. There's a jump button on X so don't worry about that missing. This is actually good as it both confirms its combat focus, and also makes you really pay attention to what your pressing and giving the game a reasonable learning curve that'll carry on for the first couple of levels. There is almost an instant feel that you'll need to practice your combat, and this is a feeling that many games just don't have any more. I've played both demo levels 4 times, and still feel like I have more to learn. The items ironically contrast with the dirverse and amazing combat system. You seem to have a very "bare bones" RPG item system. You get several types of health plants/potions, a stamina booster, a lantern (Needed at night, and it seems that the full version will feature an oil refill system), and (if you find it) a stone for distracting enemies. Really doesn't get too creative, or stray from a very barren RPG feel. This could be a nice way of getting back to simplicity, a fault for the game, or just a demo limitation. Only the full version can tell. In the mean time you can use the items in several ways, like combining them or trading with friends. There is a natural weight system instead of an inventory limit, so the more you carry is the heavier you move. Giving it too friends will be useful, but so is stealing from them. Depends on whether you want to revive them, or allow them to heal off their own supplies and stay in the fight 100%.

The classes in this game are both so much fun. I'm actually almost complaining because of this, as I want them both when I can only have one. There are still 7 others, and I'm already stuck between deciding a rouge archer or a swordsman. The swordsman has light/heavy slashes, shield based attacks and a taunt if you're holding L1, and a set of really great moves like a dodge and thrust sword move if you're holding R1. The Archer has two daggers for his basic attacks, and has a good infantry moves with them like a skull splitting move on its R1 set. The L1 set pulls out the bow and you can choose a basic shot, a full shot (knocks goblins off their feet), a tri-arrow shot, and an artillery angled shot for a group of enemies. Archery is pretty great, and actually feels quite fun unlock most RPGs I've tried bows in. However the drawback (what is with me and these puns?) is that it needs to be a team effort. Thankfully that's what the demo gives you, but I imagine the class would suck if I didn't have a mage and a crazy swordsman by my side.

The graphics are decent. After looking into some other opinions, everyone is either making a fuss over how awesome they are, or how glitchy and sub-par they are. Nobody can make up their mind, and I feel alone on an island that just says "they're good and nothing more". So I guess I don't have much to say past that. Well, I will say that the fire looks amazing and for some reason I feel like there isn't enough blood. The blood is always on character models, not dynamically bleeding or leaving any real impression until you've killed them. The first time I fought the griffin boss, it actually didn't bleed until it died and then it was just everywhere on the character model. It's like one deadly slice soiled its entire body with patches of blood stains and scar stripes. The gore is just unnatural, but this isn't some kind serious complaint. I've also noticed the detail on the bosses is far greater than that on the goblin or small enemies. You just see basic figures with the goblins, like their color and shape/size, but that's about all you'll notice. Either the combat gets too frantic to tell or care, or they simply wont give you a good look at them. The bosses show off amazing detail, like the Lion's face, the Griffon's feathers, or the dragon's "I'm huge, red eyed, and going to burn you like grass" type of powerful look. The sounds are decent, with the pawns (your friends) saying very cheesy and epic hero lines and advice, typical monster sounds, and average battle sounds. The music itself is pretty good, but doesn't leave a huge impact. It's a bit above average, but don't expect too much.

So I'll go on a little more about the pawns. They're far better than I thought they'd be, and they surprised me more than anything else in the demo. For starters, yes they have good AI. They only messed up once, and costed me a restart because they confused me into the wrong direction (long story short, it was a cliff). Apart from that, they are relentless fighters, give advice to the situation, heal you, and sometimes... they're just a little too good. Seriously, the first fight I got into I only killed one guy by pushing him into fire. They mauled everybody else before I could figure out the situation. I was reading how someone else had the same problem, and decided to replay and throw his friends off a cliff so that he could get a good grip on combat by himself. The full game wont have this problem due to full pawn customization. Kind of ironic to find an AI driven squad game to be too good in AI. However some people are questioning boss AI, but they aren't too bad. Because of all this, the difficulty is in question (too easy or too hard?), and it makes the full game even more unpredictable. The worst complaint I have for not only the pawns, but the whole demo, is the pawn's camera mugging. Every time they do or say something special, the camera is stolen from you and pans to a slow motion pawn doing... whatever the game thinks is awesome. It's like if a shooter decided to show you a kill cam every time your friend did something cool, while interrupting your own gameplay. I understand that it's important to know if your pawn wants you to do some team move like holding a goblin for you to hit, but it got really old really fast and destroys the pacing of your own fighting. This is especially the case for the griffon fight, where every minute one steals the camera to ask if you want them to boost you up to the griffon (I still don't know how to accept their invite either). I'll check options again in hope that this can be toggled off, because this is quite annoying. It'd be much better if the pawns only said it, or had a glowing icon for it instead of the camera being robbed from you every time.

Still yet to be seen is how open the game will be, what will the RPG elements look like, how fun are the other classes and skills, and how much general content will we get. Also Capcom doesn't have the best DLC record, and we're wondering if the game will have extra day 1 content that should have been in the game. I think for the most part, this game can't get any less than a 7/10 and has potential to get a strong 9. It's out of 10 range because everyone seems to be picking up their own set of glitches, and each console version has their own tech problems (Xbox gets screen tearing while PS3 gets FPS drop). I haven't noticed so much, but then again if I can tolerate Two worlds 2's problems, then I am probably blind to basic glitches in RPG games. Here's to hoping this game does great, and we receive more action heavy RPG games.

The myths about libertarians/libertarianism

Well my mind for a while has been in a political mode. I've been learning more about political philosophies, better defining my own views, and have especially been paying attention to the upcoming American election. I am personally a libertarian, and at a good moment in time to. Ron Paul has been representing this political perspective well, and so we finally have someone to represent us. He's brought many of us together, however he has a group of nut cases following him to. This combined with just the generally unknown information about libertarians, has spawned some rather weird myths and half truth statements. I'll be going over some things that either aren't true, or things that are simply misunderstood about libertarians.

To start, we need to understand and define libertarianism. It is the philosophy that thrives off of the individual, and a lack of government interference. In this system, the gov shouldn't tax much, shouldn't control the market, and the gov is not responsible to power beyond protecting citizens with things like police force and courts. We believe the government should stay out of our personal lives and the economy. In America this is by far the most constitutional political philosophy. It's nearly impossible to find a libertarian who isn't also a constitutionalist. This is because the constitution was built to tell the gov what it could do, and therefore it's a strict control over government and a libertarian's dream. Outside of America, libertarian isn't even a real word. Since america has its political names confused, liberal here is like conservative in most other places. From what I understand liberal in the general world usually means free markets, small government, etc. In other words, libertarianism is the american version of what liberal is elsewhere. We are fiscally right-wing, and socially left-wing. We are distant relatives to anarchy, and rivals with just about any far left/right system such as socialism and fascism. For more information on what libertarianism is, I'd recommend looking up an official party site, or research Ron paul. Now on with the myths

Libertarianism = Anarchy
I'll do this one first, since I just defined the philosophy. Sadly some people can't tell a difference between small government and no government. There's a huge difference. In a no gov world, nobody publicly runs something unless its off donations. People have no law enforced rules, just the consequence of action. Libertarians would suggest the world keep a police force, militia, or something for defense purposes and basic laws that preserve the people and rights. Honestly, I don't even know if Anarchy is even a political philosophy. It is a phase. If government falls, it doesn't fix anything. You have nomads who wander and eventually group around a leader or leader movement. This movement wipes out others, and grows until you have a new society and government. How is this libertarianism? This idea that they are the same is false. For those saying that these two are the same thing, I'll just ask them to prove it. They never have been able to. Some will bring up anarcho-libertarianism to justify the myth, but does that really make any sense? You can't have a small government, while having no government. Either you represent liberty and a force to keep that and unify it, or you represent nothing but your survival in a leaderless world.


Libertarians are atheists
This is inherently false. I could just point to myself, as I have a deist leaning philosophy of god, meaning I believe in a great god but not man made dogma or holy texts. However I can see where this myth stems from, and why it may have some small bits of truth. If someone is libertarian, there are 2 things that they probably have in their behavior. They are likely very individual people who don't cope with much unless they've brought it through a test of free thinking and reasoning. Second, they likely have had bad experience with things like government. Now lets say the church, or common religion was the government (as they share some traits) and lets say the libertarians find they haven't agree with what this church has said because it doesn't make any sense when they've reasoned with it. With the church being a frustrating and incompetent figure in this perspective, and the church hands out things that can't be made sense of, what else is the libertarian to do? They either form an opinion on god from their own thoughts and reasoning, or go to another religion to see if they can make sense of it, or announce that they believe in no god. So it makes sense that a majority of libertarians are either atheists, or believe in a minority religion or their own. However, to assume that libertarians are atheists is overgeneralized, and wrong. Pointing again to the leading libertarian figure, Ron Paul actually holds a catholic belief. Because of his religion, he believes that god gave all humans an equal right to freedom and liberty. Consider this myth dust.

Libertarians are conspiracy theorists
Did the government tell you this myth? I knew it! They are out to get us! Joking of course.

Joking aside, this myth is what made me want to make this list. Sadly this is where the nuts are in Ron's fanbase. You'll sadly see "end the zionist control" all over some ron paul videos. It's getting just as annoying to us libertarians as it is to the rest of the sane world. It's no secret that the gov holds secrets. However we've put most of that whole "reveal secrets" thing on the bottom of our list. Being mad at secrets doesn't make you libertarian, and neither does being a loon who shouts "Bush blew up the towers!". Ironically, one of the presidents who fought secrets the hardest was a democrat (Bill clinton). He just resulted in getting papers full of so many black lines that it wouldn't have even have made a fun mad libs game. Also, this guy laughs hard at anti-gov conspiracy theorists, mocking one of the 9/11 truthers at one of his speeches. Politics and conspiracy theories just shouldn't mix, and they really shouldn't be associated with libertarians. Our job is to stop the gov from taxing people and businesses to death, not getting them to admit where they're hidden alien technology is. We do focus hard on getting the federal reserve to stop hiding its spending, but who wouldn't? They're responsible for a lot of America's dept, and its no conspiracy that they're being irresponsible with it. Libertarians aren't conspiracy nuts. We fight for a smaller government for a better life. We aren't the same as those who keep UFOs on their youtube favorites. Those people are just riding on the anti-gov bandwagon, and they're giving us a bad name.


Libertarians are self-ish A-holes who want to kill the poor!
HAHAHA! This is just a joke. If this myth has implanted itself in your head, than you need to take a class on perspectives. This was likely made up from radical socialists or super welfare advocates who think that anything less than the government literally spoon feeding you is a crime. Whether or not welfare should exist is a complete debate that I myself have not made a strong stand on. The right-wing and libertarians view ranges from saying that there should be limited or less welfare, down to the idea that the entire system is theft from the successful people. I don't think anything in this range could be considered selfish, if you're a reasonable person. If there was no welfare, that doesn't make you selfish for supporting it. You can individually choose to donate or help poor people. There have been soup kitchens and free stuff for those who got on the worst side of luck. The idea of no welfare supports the idea that taxing people is theft, and really what else are you going to call it? It's moral to give to the poor. Can you say the same if you were threatened by jail to give to t he poor? That's the debate to it, and if you answered "it's immoral" to the last question, you're likely on the libertarian side of it. It's senseless to sit there and call anti-welfare a selfish position. It proves that one has lost reason, and chooses to only accept their side. Nobody sane wants to kill the poor, but whether or not they can be saved with welfare (and how much of it) is a good question. I don't think calling anybody names is going to solve anything, so I'm shocked that this myth still exists.