The culture war comes from both sides...

I really hate to get political, but sometimes the politics in gaming or the gaming community comes out in such a way, that it only feels right to talk about it. It started with something I wanted to say in regards to a piece of Prey. There was a spot in the game which I was surprised didn't cause more of a fuss/virtue-signaling than it did, and for once I'm quite happy with the internet. ...and then something else happened, and now I realize why the internet can still be stupid. There's not only one guy who did make a fuss about the issue, but Far Cry 5's poster happened, and now people are bitching about that. It's time to talk about the culture war again, and this time I'm not angry at the typical social justice crusaders, because this time it's their supposed opposition that is doing the exact same damn thing I hate.

If you can remember from the way I've discussed things before, you could get the idea that I hate the intrusion of SJW politics in journalism and discussions. I've always hated it. This idea that you're gaming experience is somehow different based on your skin (pretending people are oppressed on face-less online gaming), or this thought that females have to be funneled into a narrowly perfect image or else it's hurtful, or the fact that they push for developers to re-write their games, characters, or humor to suit their sensitive needs. It all came to a boiling point long ago with a hastag consumer revolt, and ever since then and the more recent American elections, the culture war has been in full motion in all it's bullshit glory. Like usual with what you'd expect from a reactionary push back, at some point the stupid reaches circular motion and comes around to the other side.

I hate this stuff because I don't want to be demonizing developers over petty shit, divisive tactics that hurt friendly communities, or put down artistic expression of any kind (save for just bad art, then criticize it right). I want everyone to be able to walk in, pick up a game, and have fun with it. That doesn't mean zero politics in gaming, or that you can't complain about how a game was made, but let's keep things within reason and know that fun and art is the biggest thing here. Not everyone has to have "representation" to have fun, and not every game needs to be a safespace tailored to your views of the world. Naturally, that puts me in high disgust when the right-wing or supposed Anti-SJW watchdogs start sounding pretty familiar, beating on those war drums that demand or demean developers over things related to political or cultural ideology. So let's talk about two examples where I fear the anti-SJW part, is become exactly the thing they hate...

Prey's Nontroversy:

Assuming that picture holds, that above is Danielle Sho. She's one of the more... perhaps, interesting side characters of Prey. She felt a little forced at first, but in retrospect she has a bit more staying power than countless other of the 50+ names that are actually documented on the station. You see, the weird thing is your progress is blocked with one of many "your-princess-is-in-another-castle" halts to the main campaign, as you're told the one door you need is voice locked even to a top-class dude, by someone you've never heard of until now. So you've got to go and find voice samples of this character to collect their voice, and this means going through multiple voice logs, and is one of the only mandatory moments of audio-log collecting in the game. It just so happens that you'll uncover a lesbian story in the process. I'm going to admit the thought hit me that with all these contrivances, it felt a tad bit forced, and I still wonder if Arkane was doing it for points from the "look at me, we're so progressive" crowd.

However, maybe this was a genuine twist they wanted for one of their characters. It's hard to say these days whether inclusiveness like this is genuine, or forced. Fine, you know what, life goes on and the game was still fantastic. The character became a tad bit more interesting than normal anyway. She also loved games, played music, was in a band even in the middle of a space station, had some rebellious stress against upper-management, and (MILD SPOILERS) was badass enough to escape out into space, and used her dying breath to send you an email (from freakin' zero-G space) reminding you to seek vengeance on someone. Plus everything else that surrounded that level area was awesome, so it's kind of good to have taken that detour.

Whether or not her lesbian side was a choice to please certain people, Sho was still a neat character in an amazing game, and that's all that should count. Again, I'm glad I didn't see the bulk of the internet throwing a parade or hate mob against the decision, they just... let it be. The game was the center-point as an amazing game. It wasn't to last for everyone I heard from though. It bugged me a little when a small youtube reviewer decided it was worth his time and breath on the review to smack-talk SJWs, and talk down on this scene. He further showed his ignorance, by suggesting he could find no straight relationships in the game, when there were actually a few. When I called him out on this as being just as bad as SJWs complaining about "evil agendas", and how we can't perfectly assume this was agenda driven, I got this weird response that... not only is wrong, but misses my point completely:

"Given that statistics show that the number of people who say they are gay is less than 3% (some claim less than 2%), it is HIGHLY questionable how these extreme minorities constantly end up in media creations. Meanwhile, openly conservative/libertarian individuals make up a FAR, FAR larger portion of the world but are rarely represented in media (and if they are, it's a temporary character who is presented as a  negative stereotype). Yes, it's obviously an intentional effort to shoehorn these relationships into media despite their extreme rarity. This is an agenda -- the Social Justice agenda."

Okay, so... I could debunk that first off by noting the fact that there's an extremely normal amount of straight people in the media, and gay portrayal is still fairly low. I could also note it's definitely way lower than Libertarian anti-government type plots (full of entire resistance armies going against an over-reach of power) across any work of media. Oh, and gay rights are a part of libertarian philosophy. Still he's upset that Prey doesn't meet a right-wing inclusion quota, sounding familiar to the stupid demands of the left. Ultimately the fact remains, he proved absolutely nothing about how this was the social justice agenda, he just further espoused this "they're messing with my games! My... perfectly good games, that I still rated fondly, but still... ew, SJWs!" Oh yeah, I did mention that, right? He enjoyed the game, mostly singing praises about it until that one moment. He just had to virtue signal, and pledge his part to stick his finger in and yell at SJWs. It's absolutely unapologetic virtue signalling of the most obvious kind, and it achieved nothing other than starting an argument with people who were less agenda driven, and more of just... disturbed by his politically charged comments. Comments that nobody else I've seen make, because we're too busy enjoying a good game.

It's about the freakin' gameplay!

Far Cry 5 (allegedly) hates American Southerners

Oh, but it gets worse. Anyone see the Far Cry 5 image circling around? Oh boy, do I have something special for you:

Have a full-size one, go on. I want you to see whatever details you want, because... you know where this is gonna go. So this has been making the rounds lately, and a minority of the community is already pissed off and discussing how anti-right wing, anti-white, and anti-religious this game is. Probably anti-nationalist too, because... we're seriously just throwing this all into the same pot until it loses it's meaning, just like how everything to the left is racism or... something with a misused placement of the phobia suffix. I am so happy to emphasize that minority point, but it's sadly a larger issue than Prey's deal. Quite a few guys are just making Ubisoft jokes, or wondering about the gameplay, but... there's still those posts cropping up. It also doesn't help that people like The Verge are running with this stir-up, suggesting quite out-right that Ubisoft is indeed making white and redneck the great evil. So, uh... does this at all sound a bit... familiar? Yeah, we've been here before, with complete idiots like this Kotoku article. (I'm sorry, it hurts me as well to link to that site).

So now what do we have here? The exact same idiotic assumptions in place, but culturally reversed. We're looking at artwork before any real trailers are out, and complaining about an "agenda" applying on the developers based on YOUR views of the culture war (Offense is taken, not given). It could easily be a terrible or false assumption just like the supposed "racism" problem, but nope we're really running with this idea that (to quote a guy) they're going after "trump voters". Okay, so let's play along for a second:

1. If this game were anti-white, the "sinner" prisoner wouldn't look white. I mean... for all we know, maybe he's not, but since we're playing the judge-a-book-by-it's-cover game, he sure looks too white to be anti-white.
2. What kind of American nationalism changes the flag? I know it can happen, but it's stupid to throw a fit over how the villains are super american, while they have a different flag. Alternatively ubi could have taken a stab at the confederate flag if they really wanted to lash out against certain people, but yet here we are with this weird cross version of the stars (not here) and stripes.
3. Admittedly the image is difficult to find at a good resolution with the entire picture, but the one I have sadly cuts off the bottom where you find ammo crates and the front piece of RPG launchers. Now with that knowledge in addition to the assault rifle, the planes in the background, and the freakin' painted wolf, you're going to sit there and tell me these are normal American citizens? Or normal rednecks? Oh please, you'd have to not only stupid, but find that your own assumptions on southern culture are exaggerated. These guys are extremists, the usual bad guys.
4. Even IF they were mocking religious conservatism, this is nothing new. Remember Sabal, the religious nut of FC4 who wanted to wash away the sins by killing whoever he deemed as heretics? Oh but now it's a problem because they're white Americans? Or alternatively, you're going to say "see, Ubisoft is anti-right wing this whole time", to which I'll remind you the other side of the coin. If you didn't see Sabal's ending, you'd see the one where Amita the liberal drug-lord, came into power and forced people to work "for the common good" at gun point. Oh, and it was implied she murdered a little girl just to make sure she erased all religious culture. Extremism was the enemy, not your stupid culture war beliefs, and thankfully people were smart enough to applaud the way it was done in FC4. How sad is it that with FC5, we're here where a minority of the supposed skeptic/right-winger community are coming out as snow flakes, offended by a game art.

Oh, hey, there's that iron cross thingy again.

So, alright, let's pretend we're all sane people again and assume we'll be fighting extremists in Far Cry 5. What other game has also done this? Here, I'll even star the ones that aren't religious-like. Well: *Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, Deadspace, Zeno Clash, RE4, Possibly Skyrim, any game with nazis*, 2016's Doom, Borderlands 2 (cult of firehawk), Soulsborne games, Probably any Warhammer 40'000 games (even if you'll usually be playing as a religious nut to, it's kind of set to be the space crusdades), and... oh hey, perhaps maybe any game inspired by modern day terrorism where we're actively worried about religious radical nutjobs in real life! Funny how often you can see this pattern when you put down your own self-centered world view of politics, and look around a bit. It's not a personal attack on you, it's one on extremists... oh unless you are an extremist, then fuck you.

This is also all coming from someone who is an american white southerner. Over at one of the places I stay (parents separated) I've got a bit of peach moonshine left in a mason jar that sits over on a table, a confederate flag flying out in the front yard, a basement with a collection of guns and even historic swords or replicas, and it's surrounded by a decent amount of woodland scenery. Now most of that is admittedly a byproduct of my father, who's definitely a bit more redneck than me and has choose to do stuff like fly that flag. It's definitely a part of my family and history though. However I think I respect him enough to think and hope that he's not at all worried about being offended by artwork for a virtual game. He's got more things to worry about, including actual SJW outrage like the fact a monument in town is eyed to be taken down by the city. He's not concerned or afraid of liberals having their own voice in the media, we're both actually fans of that cheesy film Ferngully after-all, and he liked James Cameron's Avatar even more than I did. He's concerned when the culture wars comes in to rewrite history, or destroy it altogether, and suppress freedoms like that of expression. He is occupied more with that, than to actually become that very thing himself and hate on Far Cry 5 because "Oh no, the bad guys of a fictional video game have church and apple pie. How dare they!"

Apple pie: Conquering the world as soon as it gets out of the oven

...and here's the thing, even if Ubisoft is pushing an agenda here... WE TOLD THEM TO DO THAT IF THEY WANTED TO! Do you remember when SJWs were bitching and complaining, begging established things to change? (well, it still happens, no need to "remember") It was said time and time again, stop ruining our fun, and go do your own games. Well, maybe now Ubisoft has decided to speak up more politically. Let's say they were blatantly obvious about it, one of the bad guys had a "Make America Great Again" hat on his head, the sinner was an illegal alien being executed, there's a massive wall being built in the background, and one of those guys even had a nazi symbol because... that's what the left thinks all trump supporters are doing apparently. Well guess what, we told them they can do that, because that's exactly how art works! We told them if they wanted their messages, if they want to put more gay or trans people in games, then go and make your own damn games with that exact thing there. What the hell do you think is going on whenever a game has actual nazis as villains!? How about all those games with Russian spies and fictional depictions of cold war threats? How about nearly everything in Killzone, and how it was a sci-fi depiction of various historic events redone with a slightly deeper perspective on the antagonists? How about the founding father loving, white christian only type, pro-'murica of Bioshock Infinite? These are political messages in the games, and we're fine with that! Now when the shift turns just a slight bit in this awful climate, you've shown you're okay to go back into the culture wars, slinging mud or demanding games to be burned down because they offend you? No, fuck off, and go make your own games. ...oh, and if you're a nationalist, you can leave America because I can tell you right now, you do not stand for the amendments it was built on if you're going to have your fragile little ego and feelings hurt over a video game.

Bioshock Infinite had an absolutely fantastic job of writing one very crucial part in the game. Not everybody agrees with it, and it's sparked some people who were upset by the sudden turn, but I feel like it's the most important part in all of this and exactly why I choose the heading image. This minority of right-winged snowflakes bitching and moaning about their hurt feelings are more closer to the Vox Populi than they are to the actual founders that look like them. They came out of this viewpoint that their voice was unheard, so they reacted in a great way. They rose up to fight the bitter and divisive press, they donated to those that actually needed through charity, and they fought against this threat. However somewhere along the lines, it wasn't good enough for some of them. Some of them had a taste for something bolder, and decided to snap at the "roots, or else it'll grow back", and with the growing sight that it's good to be revolutionary, good to be against the liberal side, and a cool punk-rock sort of rebel against the establishment, they think it's points for their side to fight tooth and nail on this culture war front. They became the same horrible monsters, or perhaps even worse, than the ones who they claimed to fight against. The rebels in Bioshock infinite, the supposed warriors of virtue and justice, who then turned around to collect scalps and torment innocent citizens, and kill children, became monsters that were far from just. Now, the right-wing has it's own people of social justice, watch dogs with teeth who want to bite and chew out the "social justice" they don't agree with, and claim it's the fair and just thing to do. I'm calling it out for what it is, and remembering my place and principles. I enjoyed wrecking both the founders and Vox Populi in Infinite, and I saw it coming a mile away. I see it now in the culture war, and I sure hope it doesn't spread to be another giant monstrous disaster.

...but I'll just be here, enjoying video games, and hoping that idiots don't wreck them and their ability to express whatever cool things the artists come up with. To me, the only sad thing about this FC5 piece, is I'll miss the adventure to exotic places. However, maybe I'll enjoy laughing as I hijack a moonshine area or something. Who knows, I'm looking forward to hearing about the gameplay either way.

2017 so far...

Welp, with the year coming around to sort of a half-way point, I feel there's plenty of games to discuss again. This is sort of my excuse to talk about what I've been playing and feeling without writing an entire Now Playing, even if a few of these games will have such a thing done already. This is about any game I've been playing that feels worth documenting right here. That said, I have to say I haven't played a whole bunch of strong-feeling games that released in this exact year. That's not to say the games have been bad, but a whole lot of them are games that were in some way out earlier, and are still fantastic. I don't know how this is going to come down to GOTY if this keeps up, but I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll have played more like Nier by the time that happens.

Far Cry Primal

Someday, I hope to get back into this game and play it through some more, but yet there's really not a big pull, and from what I can remember... I think I see why. It's a big deconstruction of modern presentation and what we usually know for a Far Cry game, and yet an amplification of what we do know as an Ubisoft "sandbox" game. Far Cry 4 hid it in chaos, great writing, an interesting civil conflict, and just a loud and proud sense of fun as well as new features. Primal... has you reading subtitles to figure out what cavemen do, and there's not really a whole lot beyond fetch quests. Go get this guy, go get that guy, now go hunt this animal to prove yourself "worthy". In-between these incredible (hah!) story concepts, there's an absurd amount of even more blatant activity checklisting going on. Almost everything is divided up into a list, and honestly the funnest part of that was going around to outposts and fighting people. That wound up being the bulky of my gameplay experience, until I just got bored of even that.

Don't get me wrong, Primal isn't a bad game, and has some great ideas in there. I love the new pet taming system, the little bleedout detail with the animals, some of the environments are amazing, and then there's the way you need to work on cold protection and stay close to fires. There's a clever bit of survival details snuck into an otherwise mundane ubisoft game, but ultimately a lot of what makes a mundane ubisoft game so dull and mockable are on loud display. It never tries to even hide it, it's clear even when your pet system is like opening and calling a freakin' inventory complete with grayed out critters you haven't unlocked or leveled up to yet. Everything included the little trees are glowing items to pick up and check off in your inventory, you have a stash system to keep up with, a giant tree that you have to unlock to unlock the unlock tree (seriously), etc. It's just a bunch of busy worked wrapped up in an awesome theme that... they buried under the busy work. This is why people are fed up with your formula Ubisoft.

...oh, yeah, and the melee combat is broke as fuck in a game that's going to be filled with it. How on earth... *sigh*

Uncharted 4

Uncharted 4 is just the best, right guys? No, not really. I think... unless I'm confusing this with another post I did somewhere else, I think I went over the fact that Uncharted 4 doesn't pace itself right for me. I love a lot about it, but it's amplified on Uncharted 2's issue of pacing issues and weird moments. The combat is great, platforming is fine, story is great (especially once you get through the slog of an opening with five or so flashbacks), etc. However it's still not beating Uncharted 2 in just how fun that was. I have to wonder what others are seeing in this to dub it the best thing ever. It has to be the emotional investment and good writing of the story alongside it's presentation. Especially with that ending man, because... dang, it's just the best ending to any franchise I can think of. But yeah, I think it still has people thinking too emotionally, and less critically. That's not a bad thing necessarily (games are meant to be fun, and that's all that counts in the end. So good on ND for making a game people just hypnotically love), but I'm still left scratching my head as to how this was supposed to be one of the best out there. I think as I've gone along, it's been further proven as others come out and celebrate the exclusives Horizon and Bloodborne more in the long run. Those are games with actual... well, more gameplay worthy things going on for them. Uncharted 4 is still pretty fun, and I've enjoyed it. Oh and that ending, holy crap, that ending is still incredible. In the end, I was slogging through this game way more to conclude the good story than I was to truly play a fantastic game. It was a good game, but one I could kind of put away after it was done, and walk away to think of other things.

EDF 4.1

Yeah, keeping this quick and image-less, it's EDF yet again. I had some raw senseless fun, love the new fire effects on this, but hate the stingy weapon system on this go around. I sunk time into tons of levels, played some co-op with my dad later on, and I've had some quick and fun laughs with it. That's really all there is worth reporting. Go kill some bugs, or... eh, don't. I've discussed this in better detail with the Now Playing article on it, go search that up if you want a bigger talk.

Watch Dogs 2

Remember how I said Far Cry Primal was a step backwards in how to present an Ubisoft game? Watch Dogs was okay in doing that sort of thing, able to engage me with a real cool story about vigilante-ism (uh, or whatever the word I'm looking for is), revenge, and a couple subtle gameplay quirks that worked with it. Watch Dogs 2 however steps forward completely, not only giving you a more fun and quirky story worth your time and investment, but tying it in flawlessly with awesome side-quests, your stats, online, and just the world itself. Watch Dogs 2 takes a more goofy and cheesy approach, being compared to the movie Hackers more so than an actual story of hacking. That puts it in a better spot than the association with batman the original had, and it truly feels like a good fit. Every mission had some kind of fun story to it, there are some neat little twists, and yet it surprisingly feels more genuine and realistic with how it perfectly bleeds some real life culture and internet goofs through into the game. There's even a point where you're able to leak an Ubisoft game, which was a real legit preview to some upcoming project. Very clever guys. This is how to spin your formula in a way that truly works. It's not just a checklist, it's a world worth exploring. 

Oh, and the hacking gameplay is so much better as well, with one of the best little things being the fact you can remotely drive other people's cars! It just feels so good to run around and goof with things this time around. Nearly everything is just so fleshed out and fun, that I'm actually doing some of the lesser side-quests like the Uber car rides just as a break from the more legit side-questing... and even they sometimes surprise me with moments of good content, like a daredevil youtuber who asks you to do tricks, or a guy that leads you into a gang turf war. I kind of miss the old character at times, but it's still all so good. I feel a bit guilty for not having finished this yet, because I needed to clear some space and bigger games were coming up at the time. Still I definitely need to get back and play some more.

Gravity Rush 2

Gravity Rush 2 is quite an odd game. In addition to being an open world super hero gravity manipulator collect-o-thon, it also just feels... so much like a Sony + Nintendo collaboration. Something about it is just plain fun for fun's sake, charming, creative, very gamey, and yet so free and feature packed. It's the best of both worlds, and yet... for some reason I'm just not entirely hooked on it. I love it a lot while in the moment, but I kind of need to be in the moment. When I turn the switch off, or swap out another game, suddenly GR2 is just that game I played once upon a time. The story is alright and everything, but nothing about it sticks with me. In the moment, it's fantastic. Out of it, and it doesn't feel like it exists. I don't know what the actual problem or lacking feature is, but it's there. On top of that, I also hate some of the quest goals. A couple of times the game is just plain tedious, like a mission that quite literally has you exhausting your powers through miles of un-broken fetch quest errand running. Yeah... that just sucks guys, no other way about it.

Worms WMD

Worms actually came back. Awesome! This worms game is very well crafted with tons of the good classic features, even some improvements like the amount of on-screen worms you can have, diverse weapons, and even entirely new features like vehicles, crafting, and turrets. Despite it's look on the surface, the new art style really does hardly anything. Every exact movement and actual control is the exact same, giving an artificial feel to the new direction, but everything else is a sign of exactly what the art style evokes: change without forgetting the soul and spirit. There's a lot of new and awesome stuff, with nothing bad missing. Often T17 can't seem to put together a worms game with even their own normal features functioning together, never the less with a successful gimmick. This game is the true successor we get once a blue moon, and it feels good to finally play a great worms game again.

For Honor

For Honor is an amazing game, trapped to shitty and terrible mistakes. It's a living example to the idea that maybe, gameplay isn't all that matters... the thing it's built on does, because publishers can easily make it a bitch to get to that gameplay. I only rented this game, and I loved the time spent with it and the orochi fighter. I enjoyed practicing advanced kills, practicing with bots, figuring out optimized strategies, loved dueling, but then again I also lost 30 minutes of a solo campaign level because someone was fooling around with the same set of hook-ups that had the wi-fi. Why am I losing all that progress to a solo level? Because Ubisoft has fallen into the stupid trap of thinking that for some reason they need to throw their players under a bus, forget how proper saving works, and lost my sale all by their forced and unnatural online only position for the game. Alongside The Division, and word about a big online emphasis on AC, this is why I fear Watch Dogs 2 might be the last good game I get from them. Even though they make amazing games like this, it doesn't matter, I'm out if you don't respect my time and ability to just sit down and play a game. But what about those who do love online? Well fuck you to, because they have their entire system tied to outdated (back even when it launched) P2P type matchmaking that stops your fight and crashes on you if the host has a life and leaves, or the game just has a digital brain fart.

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (Remaster)

Turok 2 is (as far as I can remember) the first FPS I've ever played, and had so many cool things... in the entire ten minutes or so I saw for the time at least. I never could beat the first level, and even now let's face it... it's a bit crazy for a first level. There are people even now refunding it over that, or saying it does in-fact take about an hour or two. Oh and the developers seemed to know it to, because they only made six levels like it. However it's a good thing I'm not one of those 1st level quitters anymore, because this remaster hit the right spot and made some great adjustments that made the game far more accessible. The awesome weapons, animation, and weird gameplay of the time all shine through with a remaster, and with added gore and a mode that mocks Super Hot... because why not? It was a spectacular nostalgic high during the month Turok 2 released, and yet it was all still weirdly new, and I've got to say I really enjoyed playing through it again... even if it wasn't all quite smooth sailing with the naturally crazy designs. Also they put a freakin' sun in the underground level for some reason, what the hell Nightdive?

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (Remaster)

Because one wasn't enough. When I said I was on a bit of a turok high during 2's remaster, I mean for the franchise, so I ran back to play the first one as well. I really enjoyed re-exploring it with more respect for the differences between the two, and even wound up writing an article on the sort of strange sense of innocence weird games like these bring. It was very simple, yet complex enough to have depth, and it was really fun just getting back and making an even harder push to advance where I last left off. Both of Nightdive's remastered versions are worth a run for any major FPS or retro game fan.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

There are two major issues with Horizon that keep me from enjoying it way more. 1) The pacing for the main quest started to bottle itself up into long exposition halls. I love lore and everything, but this feeling of making an open world game and then forcing a major point of your game to go consistently down some of the most poorly designed corridors is stupid. Give me lore, but not at the expense of what the game has set up for you as actual gameplay. 2) I can't play on one of my televisions, because Horizon is among the games designed so carelessly that they aren't optimized with all televisions properly.

Bitching set aside, this game is pretty awesome for the most part. Nothing as phenomenal as some are making it out to be. It's essentially witcher + Far Cry with a cool theme, and a crappy bioware dialogue system occasionally edging in. There's nothing amazing about that, and before someone brings up "but these guys just did killzone before", then fuck you for ignoring how amazing Killzone was, and how talented Guerrilla have always been. Like Killzone, Guerrilla has taken popular overused tropes, and refitted them with an amazing touch. They just happened to choose the genre that everyone is more crazy for right now, and I'm slightly less so. I love the dynamic part destruction, the story, the machine monsters, but some of the repetition, open world fluff, and inventory management creeps in and brings it back down a little. It's a really good game, and definitely among the best of this year that I've played, but... well it's really good. Not incredible, just really good in my opinion.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Nintendo's doing something right, even if they're still screwing it up pretty hard in some ways. I've enjoyed, what, like... three articles bashing Nintendo's decisions around this particular Zelda, or it's fans defending the terrible weapon durability system? There's a lot of minor issues within this game, but for all that it has, Zelda has really done one huge element of it so good: exploring. Exploring in this game just feels so good for some reason. Running around, fooling with pick-ups, climbing everything, figuring out the little hidden depth in the game, it's all great. I've kind of put the game down for a while somewhere fairly early on due to other things just going on, or distractions, but make no mistake, I do appreciate a lot of little things this game is doing. While Horizon manages to hit a lot of great refinements in the familiar, Zelda revels in just the child-like play that should be in all open world games, yet is really in so few. In the end I'm not sure I can pick a better of the two, but they're both really fun open world games, and I'm glad I gave into my curiousity and gave this Zelda a chance.

Snake Pass

Snake Pass is a weird one. I loved it's core concept, absolutely delighted by the idea. It was a 3D platformer type environement, but formatted for a leg-less, no jumping snake. Unlike say Tinker, which was just a 3D platformer designed so badly they didn't put in a jump, Snake Pass was designed from the ground up with this crazy yet delightful twist. However the truth is, it's really more like a physics puzzle, just disguised. The level design and everything gave it away. It's very straight forward, very linear, small bits for levels that stack up in these little menu for "worlds", and the extras are just little collectibles on the sides. There's a sad lack of freedom or interest in the levels beyond just the very obstacles themselves. That said, I'll play Snake Pass any day over freakin' Never Alone. Snake Pass was still fun, full of good spirits and charm, and held my attention for the duration of it's whole adventure. Oh and if Sog-gee's world music doesn't sooth your soul, it's probably because you don't have one. That one piece of music is almost worth the price of admission. Snake Pass is a real fun and quirky puzzle platformer, even if it isn't as entirely fun as the games it's imitating at the surface.

BulletStorm: Fullclip Edition

This game got caught up in a lot of flak for various reasons, and it's sad nobody seemed to really give it a break. BulletStorm was an awesome overlooked shooter from last gen, and it's nice that it's not only back, but improved at the gameplay level and even given an option that essentially rewrites the campaign around a new character: Duke Nukem. It's a really good fit, though certainly not implemented the very best. It has issues, but it's a fun extra, and then there's all the other gameplay features. New echo levels, returning multiplayer, a new game+ with unlimited ammo for guns you've maxed out challenges for, etc. It's all a lot of fun, and I enjoyed returning to this game with a new sheen of polish.

Yooka-Laylee

Yooka Laylee is a good reminder of two things that ironically hinge on opposite ideas of the reception with this game: 1) The internet has inconsistent and stupid principles where they are eager to rip or praise a game over shallow or barely existing reasons, even the so-called professionals. 2) Rare was a bit overrated, and not the king of platformers like they're made out to be. I'm mostly going to talk about the 2nd one as it regards the exact game here. YL really reminded me of how Rare was never the king of it's hill, but still fun despite the faults. They have odd polish, knacks for making some occasionally strange puzzles or view shifts, and then there's just the extra contrivances. These guys made Star Fox Adventures, do I really need to say more?

Yooka Laylee is a lot of fun in most respects. It's got a fun spirit to it, some nice levels and challenges, but for every step forward it takes... there's a catch or a step back somewhere. The levels have a cool expansion gimmick, but yet there's only five of them... IN A 3D PLATFORMER. Then there's all the cool abilities you can get, which add some cool variety but... have some contrivances, including a really dumb energy meter that limits one of the most core moves and systems of general momentum. Then there's all the collectibles, some of which... are next to useless like how the transformative ones are very shallow, or how awful the minecart mini-game is. Yooka Laylee is a fun mess where a smaller team of leftover rare developers got to try and do something new on a slightly different scale and time, and it's a mixed bag of success and annoyance. It's worth a try, but perhaps not for $40, and it certainly isn't a good flagship to sell the genre on.

Prey

Ever since the first trailer, I was hyped for this game, even if some of the logic was irrational. No I'm not a Shock series fan. No, I don't like horror games. No, I don't necessarily have any interest in a space game that's designed to make you backtrack. However I do love Arkane Studios, and alien monsters with a slight thriller suspense. Is that good enough? Apparently so, because I fucking love this game! While it truly does take after System Shock in a lot of ways, and has that sense of horror layered in with the design, it's also got so much of what makes Arkane one of my favorite developers out there. The game is built with the heart and mind of that sneaky, introverted, crafty, and observing lonely player; the exact type of gamer I am, or think I am. The upgrades are found, not acquired through arbitrary XP counters. The quests and treasures are best found by paying attention, and being as nosy as possible. The people are all a bit eccentric or weird, and have some sense of confusion to their history that makes you very curious about them. The story is full of tricks, clues, and "gotch ya!" surprises. The best moments, are those accidents or strange occurrences within the world, where your creativity or resourcefulness clash with the environment to fantastic and unexpected results.

Then there's the real reason this game is topping stuff, and getting extra press attention and love: The detail and level design. There is so much insane care and thought put into the littlest of details. There's D&D games being played from the crew, an origin stories to a toy weapon you can find, people being grumpy or laughing at one another, secrets being shared or clues dropped that you can legitimately use, and choices or reactions to them are far more open than you might initially expect. I've heard of stories and player choices executed in ways I didn't know were possible, from people who had a genuine different outlook or course of action, and took to play styles I never thought of. There's quite a few opportunities where what appears like a binary choice, really has so many subtle outcomes. You can fetch or delete an important voice recording with some awful details they'll hate, but let's say you send it to them. Then right as they're about to go through it with you, you can choose to delete it right in front of their face and watch them freak out about it. Stuff like that is just brilliant, and when piled on top of all the other typically stuff I love in a game, Arkane has proven yet again they know exactly everything on my bucket list to make a brilliant game.

It's easy to see why Prey is my GOTY so far for this year. I've only played a human-only run so far as I write this, so I've yet to even unleash a massive part of the game, and I'm definitely ready to replay it. However my play time was over 30 hours, and I'm not that kind of guy to stay with a game over 16 hour-ish mark without it concluding. So... that's got to really say something here. This game is just brilliant. If you're into the slower, more crafty and exploratory First-person games, you owe it to yourself to grab this ASAP.

Stop faking the death of single-player

EDIT: I know by putting this ahead of the article itself, I'm jumping the gun, but this happened. Despite not selling well in either entry, DarkSiders 3 is in the making and has people excited, because SINGLE-PLAYER is still desired, wanted, and people are making it. I'd say it almost hurts being this right, but when you're dealing with such bullshit stupid lies and myths being made-up, it's really not hard. Of course, I'm getting ahead of the point so now for the main article:

I'm often quite surprised at how often the game industry conspires against itself in a few ways. Very similar to how Square Enix thought that the kind of game that made them popular (JRPG), wasn't popular, but they never made any to actually see it, until they did and it was actually *gasp* popular. Now they're remaking FF7, because it's a classic, who would have thought it'd be so well received? If only there was that magic oracle, like a vocal audience, or a demand on the market, to predict such things! Same thing happened to the horror series, and 3D platformers, which never necessarily sold fantastic, but still does well and has an audience and will certainly sell better than some really bad spin-off ideas. Meanwhile the industry props up it's own stupid myths. Ideas like new IPs can't lead to sales, even though all their old IPs obviously came from that at some point, and freak incidents like Assassins Creed 1, Destiny, and others exist. Heck Dishonored was proof of a new IP selling well, even doing better than it's sequel. Oh and Gears of War's numbers are plummeting to. So do sequels suddenly not sell? No, that's stupid, but I'm shocked they aren't making that shit up because of some single example or failing. It's exactly what I'm talking about, they make up their own myths, and believe it for the longest time. Look at how many believed the only good way to make an FPS, was to copy COD exactly, and how many shooters didn't come even remotely close or outright failed. Oh, and remember that self-made myth that female characters don't sell? Yeah, glad we're over that stupid claim (well most, you're never going to please the SJW side that has cropped up and feeds off the myth).

Now the popular one for quite a while, has been this idea that Single-player doesn't sell. Many articles, and different spins, come out to try and tell us the same thing. Phil Spencer was caught recently saying the single-player audience isn't "consistent"... whatever that actually means. He was looking at Zelda and Horizon, like he knew actual living and awesome examples were proving the narrative wrong, and he just had to try and correct the facts with vague stupidity that sounded doubtful of others following their path. Now I'm not painting him as a necessary bad guy, as he says those games are important, but still the very fact he decides he somehow needs to make an example of how "weird" they supposedly are, or downplay their audience, is a pathetic and useless move he didn't have to do, and made no sense in doing. Pay Day 2 devs hit more at home, saying they can't go back to single-player because there were less easy ways to turn it into a constant cash flow. We'll come back to that later, because it's probably the most honest statement coming from appropriately some of the biggest scumbags of mid-tier development. But this is just the latest of a longer-standing trend to dismiss, or tamper with, the single-player market... in a time where we're seeing quite the influx of even more variety and interest from both multiplayer AND single-player markets.

apparently, not a big deal

Now, I'm going to give you a list of some successful single-player focused, and loved, games. I'm not reaching for everything that allows it, such as Borderlands (which people play more for co-op), but I'm also spinning that the other way and going to mention those that may have a lesser multiplayer component. The key focus is that these are successful, or seemingly successful, games or franchises that are sold primarily due to their awesome single-player components. Most of these are games that released fairly recently as well, or at least somewhere within the last four years, or have a really strong impact with people somewhere.

• Witcher 3
• Skyrim
• Sniper Elite (I think? Correct me if this is a bad franchise somehow making 4 entries)
• Fallout
• Doom 4
• Metro
• Dishonored (2 did less well, but still sold well over a million)
• Horizon: Zero Dawn
• Zelda
• Everything else Nintendo does that isn't Splatoon or Mario Party
• Dark Souls (has a multiplayer twist, but let's not pretend that's it's the selling feature)
• Wolfenstien
• Shovel Knight
• Dead Space (got more negative attention the more they tried to steer it away from SP)
• Ratchet & Clank
• Shadow of Mordor
• Shadow Warrior
• Far Cry 3 and 4
• Uncharted
• Last of Us
• Assassins Creed
• Both Tomb Raiders, even if Square was a bit dense about it
• Metal Gear Solid
• Mass Effect
• GTAV sold over 1 billion before they even got their online up
• Hotline Miami
• Resident Evil's main franchise
• A good influx of attention is hitting Nier, Nioh, and Persona 5. Not sure about sales and it's a bit soon to call, but they sure as hell seem relatively positive.

A wealth of adventure worth exploring

But... you know, they don't exist, 'cus "single player is dead". Numbers, facts, and an absurd list of games don't matter when they can use any excuse to make a more shallow designed game, stick it on a server, and hold things back or add them in a socially pressured atmosphere for monetary exploits. That's what Payday 2's dev was alluding towards, funnily enough the exact same guys who failed to support their console versions, and who lied about selling people bad microtransactions. These are your role-model people, cheering on the notion that single-player is bad to make for struggling teams. Nevermind the fact Awesomenauts had to go free to play to help with their consistently low player-base despite constant updates and DLC. Nevermind that Battleborn and evolve weren't making much precious DLC money when they fell flatlined after their launch week. Nevermind Titanfall 2 launched multi-platform only to bomb harder than they did as an exclusive. Nevermind that Drawn To Death released dead the very first day, even FREE.

Meanwhile people were out running towards even those poor-selling Bayonetta and Bulletstorm re-releases, because those made more fuckin' money off the back of their quality launch (that also made some money, even if a flop), than a game like Drawn to Death ever had a chance to. ...but you don't hear anyone crying from the top of the mountains that multiplayer is dead, do you? Because of course it's not. They can rip people off with loot crates, crash their own servers to shove you off to the next one, and catch you in a lame skinnerbox mixed with social pressure. All of that without needing to blow their budgets up on a single-player full of voice actors, scripts, actual creativity and artistry, and a generally cheaper budget. They aren't going to let that possibility slip them by. They don't want to consider things like how Arkane sold us on a mini-sequel with Dishonored DLC, they can charge you the same price for four maps, or some cosmetic skins you'll want to show to your friends. That's why they want to pretend single-player is dead, or that it's sooooo hard. They can't figure out other ways to save money, it's all about the best way to take things from it's own audience, which is why they so easily show a contempt for them as to say such vague and silly nonsense as "they're inconsistent" as if that was the important message of the day.

Meanwhile here's one thing I will tell you so clearly that I am consistent on: I do not support forced online bullshit like For Honor, Battleborn, or Destiny, and will not ever buy those games after Garden Warfare 2 lies in regret. I'm not doing it. There are too many better things coming up in the single-player world for me to care about that poorly designed game style that doesn't respect my time. Oh, but doesn't that contradict what they're saying? Well yes, because it turns out single-player is NOT  DEAD. Not even close. Prey, Crash, the continued influx of open world single-player, the sequel to shadow of mordor, countless indie games ranging from Strafe, and Skylar & Plux, to DLC for Shovel knight (don't tell payday 2 that there's a way to make money off of quality single-player without lying to fans). Also Spider-man at some point. Oh and Battlefront 2 is getting a single-player because it turns out the whole "dead" mode of single-player is actually considered an improvement and worthy investment to a multiplayer game. That comes after a year full of single-player releases that are being well received.

Even in space, we can hear your lies

Single-player is well and okay. It's just that there's a trend to get up on some pedastal, and pretend they're dead, hoping that at some point they might be believed. Thankfully though unlike most coordinated self-attacks on the industry, people aren't buying into their own bullshit. EA can't seem to stamp out single-player as they try and pretend only multiplayer is necessary. People like Bethesda are just too good at making single-player to stop and think of doing a big MP release that actually works. Even Sony, who profits off of artificially forced multiplayer payments with PS+, has tendancy to let awesome single-player games like Horizon and Bloodborne slip through, because their console profits off of actually making good single-player games. They know people would run out to go buy a PS4 for bloodborne, and they did. They believe their PS pro will sell once people see how beautiful Horizon is on it, and people are talking about that. They have every ability and right to point to The Order as proof that they can't sell single-player games, but they're not that stupid, and so they continue to make Uncharted focused and sold around how incredible Naughty Dog is at single-player. Now they've even got a deal with Activision, to bring back the old ND single-player awesome experience that is Crash. Single-player is well and alive, or in fact maybe even more of a booming industry than it was the last generation. It's well and alive, and good for the ones still working hard out there to produce good content.