Welp, I saw this coming. With the release of Life of Black Tiger, consumers have fallen into the usual predictable state of... complaining about choice. Damn, 1st world problems, right guys? Okay, but I'm going for the throat when I say that, really let's be reasonable here and point at two other ridiculous things: Black Tiger, and "journalism". Now if you want to bash the game, or inform the consumer the game is bad, by all means do that. However Black Tiger has passed that point and is hitting the "punch it and laugh because it's fun! Look at us buy it so we can laugh at it" point of free press. Yes, it's a terrible game, we get that. Yet apparently PSLS didn't think so, and dedicated an extra article to talking about it's trailer they posted up way earlier where people already talked about it. Ironic for them to turn around and question the store "okay, this is good", when they themselves didn't check their own damn re-posted stuff, so they can act all surprised later. Hypocrisy guys? Yup, let's give that game two articles, when they still don't have a review up for Slain, a game that worked hard to improve itself from mediocrity. Are you telling them not to do that, and they'll get coverage? Well screw you, I actually like good games.
What else is terrible, is the fact that you guys cover this, and this, more than you do actual hidden gems. Cursed Castilla, continuous updates from indie games that aren't Minecraft, Moon Hunter's expansion, Castles, the port of Mount & Blade, and the list goes on are games I don't see getting coverage while Black Tiger has double for being terribly bad. It's not even the first to do so! I don't expect every game to be covered that exists, but at the same time you're clearly not even bothering the effort when you can't even be asked to pay attention to the news you're hosting only to reprint it later "shocked" at an awful game you felt was worth more time. However, it's apparently Sony's fault that you can't get awesome games, so let's discuss quality control.
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| Yeah this really is terrible, we noticed from the very trailer. Move on! |
In case you can't tell, I'm not the biggest supporter of the logic. However my title is quite loaded in that direction for a reason. I technically do want quality control, just not to the point where I'm crying tears and writing articles over the fact Black Tiger exists (this article is based on the discussion around it). However I do still ask for some quality control, even stricter in some ways than what's going on now with major releases. For the most part though, I have very basic principles:
- Make sure the game works.
- Have it finish-able and with basic features like trophies and accessibility functions.
- It does not use illegal stolen assets, or other such stolen stuff.
That's basically it. I don't even need it to be a smooth framerate, because depending on where that limit is, you can kick out some really good games. I'm sure we can all agree a framedrop may exist somewhere and be okay, but even if we pretend games are "broken" for dipping into low 20fps frequently, what does that exclude? Well, it excludes games like Lichdom that fixed itself, it excludes games like Two Worlds 2 which I (alongside a cult following) had a lot of fun with on the PS3, and while I hate it I know others enjoy Risen 2 & 3. I know Unity was a much hated entry, but it had it's fans for all of it's flaws and oversized patches.
Then there's other traits, like the huge mess full of issues that is Black Tiger. How on earth are you going to tell someone they MUST get every bit of grammar right, must make their cut-scenes useful, restrict their loading times, and fix their awful gameplay? Well, you'd have to crack down on things a little too hard core, and other areas would just come down to subjective "this ain't fun" judgement. That's not a judgement for anybody but the consumer to make though. Plenty of great games have each had those type of problems. Old Nintendo games printed books with mistranslations, Half-life and Postal 2 would stop you mid-level or even right after combat to load, and we could go on about frame-rates to as far back as Shadow of the Colossus (you know, one of the "best games ever"). I know, I know, none of them are as severely as bad or added up as Black Tiger, but you're still asking that they come up with some uniformed standard, OR a subjective judge panel, and either could wreck some potential fun games. I still stand by the fact that Two World's 2 is a fun mess, or heck Naughty Bear. NB had frame-rate, basic camera, and just repetition type issues. Two Worlds 2 has even worse frame-rate problems, some kind of awful blur effect, stiff animations, horrible voice acting, and I could probably find more to go on with. However it's an absolute blast, with weird creatures and quests, some fun mechanics, and just a novel sense of adventure.
However let me repeat a certain point of my own standards yet again: "Have it finish-able and with basic features like trophies and accessibility functions." Oh joy, want to know what's not going on today? That! Especially the 2nd bit. Sony integrates options like accessibility, share button, remapable controls, trophy support, and screen fit in for a good reason, yet here we are today with developers openly ignoring the screen refitting tool, and for the first time I can ever recall I am getting games that DO NOT WORK with a TV that is otherwise perfectly fit to play HD games from consoles. I'm not complaining that they're too HD and I'm missing my HDMI cable, I'm talking about matching all the standard requirements, and yet Skyrim, Stardew Valley, Final Fantasy 15, and Mount & Blade's sloppy port are all off when it comes to proper TV fitting even though it is built into the damn system's options! Want to know how Stardew's team responded to criticism on this? Did they fix it? They moved the HUD.... so your screen is still cut out of the real view, and the option to actually use the console features is ignored even once brought up, it's just they tried to guess where you'd be able to see vital things normally again. This is news hardly enough people are talking about, for major releases you're paying up to maximum price for, and they can't be bothered to use the universal built-in options. Then you want to turn around and cry about Black Tiger, which every half-blind consumer can spot and turn away from it's trailer alone, but you can't report actual news that is cheating people of $60 games they can't see right!? Talk to me about curation & quality control when you get your priorities straight and demand this first. I had to learn of these culprits from either isolated reportings, or first-hand experience, and not nearly enough people are demanding devs to take responsibility and fix this, and it's insane Sony (or even MS, assuming they have the same feature) doesn't enforce it. It's a part of finishing the actual game right, and yet here I am, playing Mount & Blade where half of my health bar is eaten by my TV border.
Now, that all being said, here's the funny thing: Sony does have quality control. I love the timing of this whole controversy, because it went perfectly along a recent lengthy article with actual news, coming from the Friday the 13th crew about their difficult console certification process. Heck, I'm just happy somebody finally said something about this. It's pretty obvious that Sony, and general gaming itself, sees some kind of checks go up. It's why every game you play basically has an ESRB rating, and some legal garble in tiny text all over the place. They also forced trophies on games back in like 2008 or 9 or so, which is why games suddenly always had trophies whereas a copy of PS3's Turok has it's own odd achievement system built in instead. There's a lot of hidden forces from us at work to make these games happen, and here this guy discusses a good bit about it. You have to send your game to 4 different local divisions, check for such obscure nonsense as a guitar hero controller that lets you go back to the main menu (even though you could just reset the console... just sayin'), and how voice command needs to work with everything. Yet in this process, we obviously don't have tests to make sure games are universally fitted with the screen size options. Furthermore, he explains (in a way I admittedly don't fully understand) how crap like Unity gets an easier pass with the right sort of money.
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| Quality protection is apparently a secret cult |
This actually raises some questions of its own in some ways, especially with the release of Black Tiger, and the fact it's not exactly the only game of it's kind. How does some nobody indie-like team manage that out there while a crowd-desired horror game of a famous name is held to strict standards? Is it the way these games are being published? Is Friday a retail game that gets held to different standards? What else do we, and not even developers themselves, not know about? Heck, we haven't gotten releases like Black Tiger so frequently, and a lot of the other garbage games can be located somewhere within a 6 month or so radius of time. Did something just suddenly happen behind our backs, or is it just natural for the market to take this long for this stuff to show up? You see, this is why I'm not just standing on some hill screaming quality control. I don't know what the hell they already have in place, what's changed, or what's being looked at. I don't appreciate it being a secretive thing, and I don't appreciate the thought of good games being held back as Xbox once did with quality self-publishing indies. We don't know everything, so quite trying to ask for stricter mysterious strings just because you're not going to like the entire digital store's catalog. Most people not even asking it in a way that makes sense, with the closest constructive criticism being a panel of judges (the rest is just "Ew, bad games bad, make them only good games"). The only other thing I've seen is making solid 30/60fps mandatory, and I already discussed why that's a killer for some fun games. Now refund policies I might agree with, but nobody is talking about that, and that's the problem.
For those that think they know the answers here, and pretend like quality control is everything: If you're even half as smart as you think you are, you won't be susceptible to buying garbage like Black Tiger anyway. If you're not that smart, and worry about being burned, what makes you think you actually know the answer when even game developers don't even know the full details? A little bit of common sense goes a long way, doesn't it? So stop just yelling at the wind, and gather your thoughts a little better. I'm sticking with what I do know, and that's why my list of 3 basic things are just a small list (and yet, even that sadly isn't followed). I know I want games to work, I want them to be accessible and function within reason of the console I've purchased and the expectations that raises, and I don't want devs breaking any laws to achieve a good game. That's why I'm not upset with Black Tiger (at least, as far as I know it), and I'd rather ask people get over themselves. I am however, upset with those who are supposed to be spreading information on good games, and how word is getting around. It is their responsibility, and us as consumers, to discuss these games, and instead they aren't even checking the very trailers they post before coming back much later to pretend to be shocked for extra clicks and views. That is despicable, and that is what I will call out and fuss about. Meanwhile, I still have yet to hear much from any major news source if Slain's console release went over well, and nobody warned me of how sloppy Mount & Blade was done with even the reviews I looked up coming out of obscure youtubers. The media needs to fix themselves, before they turn and ask Sony to do it for them.
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| You don't have to agree with it all, just play what you like |
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