The Rise of the Digital Only Gaming World – Opinion

While a lot of people are buying into and even applauding the all digital marketplace that gaming is starting to go into not everyone is so thrilled. From consumer rights, to historical archiving, and more there are tons of drawbacks to what is being thrust upon us that don’t like what is coming in the entertainment world.

Consumer rights. People hear that phrase a lot in political and legal spheres but I don’t think it gets as much attention as it should for a lot of different reasons. The main reason being just lazy. It’s more convenient to be able to pull up a music streaming service, a streaming gaming service, tv/movie streaming service or to buy digital and then just access it without having to get up and switch a disc of some kind plus you save on space in your dwelling and usually a little savings in your pocket book. However, going digital gives over a HUGE portion of your consumer rights. Go read the fine print in whatever digital platform you buy a game, movie, or tv show season on. We all know that when streaming we lose access when we stop paying or if the contract for the intellectual property (From here out known as IP) expires. Most people don’t realize that when you BUY a digital copy of whatever entertainment item you get you are considered to be paying for a long term LEASE of the item. The owner of the IP continues to retain the right to revoke access to what you paid for without having to state a reason for it nor giving your money back. That’s right! You bought something but it isn’t actually yours to keep! Since it is also the age of the always on internet those same companies can go in and alter the product whenever they like. Taking out content, or changing scenes as they wish so that the original item you paid for no longer exists as you know it. If you buy a physical copy this is harder for them to do though not impossible. Also, with the always on internet gaming companies no longer put the whole game on the discs which means that even if you try and game without their input on something you paid for you can’t use it as it was in the past. Back before we as consumers started giving ground to the corporations and also demanding faster turn around on game releases it used to be that the whole game was in the cartridge or on the discs without needing release day updates/patches, or to download the rest of the actual title. This meant that a game sank or swam on it’s own. On one hand we wouldn’t have No Man’s Sky, Days Gone, or numerous other titles today be ultimately successful without the developers being able to fix their mistakes through the internet. But, we also wouldn’t be having the issues with consumer rights either. A happy medium would be for the entire game to be on discs even if it meant three or four discs for installs like happened in the past and then if there were glaring issues the patches and such could happen as needed. This allows for consumer rights to be respected, disadvantaged people with bad internet to not need to wait sometimes a day or two for a download, and the developers can still fix things as needed. There can still be DLC since that isn’t a needed part of a base game, etc. I myself am someone that insists on buying a physical copy of titles. I am growing frustrated with companies doing digital only releases however. The two that effect me the most currently are Baldur’s Gate 3 and Alan Wake 2.

I’m poor. So most of the time I have to wait on buying the next big title that I want to play. I use my local public library as a stop gap so that I can at least play it a little bit before I am able to buy it. The developers get their money because the library will buy multiple copies of a title that has a high demand…. but if the title is released digital only this is not possible anymore. This digital only future is going to turn gaming into a no poor people allowed zone again like it was in the beginning. Yes, I know that there are streaming services like Xbox Game Pass, etc. that people can pay for, but again, they won’t own anything but the console, tv, or pc that they are gaming on. They will also only have access to the title as long as it is allowed to stay in the streaming service library. I know for a fact that Xbox rotates things on and off. The cloud streaming for gaming is also still an iffy option especially if you are poor with budget level internet.

The developers state that it saves time and money to do a digital only release. If this was true then the titles would be cheaper coming out that way as well.. however, there has been no drop in price. In fact there has been an at least ten dollar increase in pricing almost across the board for bigger indie titles as well as triple A ones. On top of that the “Collector’s” or “Gold” editions have for the most part stopped having any physical items included with them unless you want to pay for the “Collector’s” stuff AND buy the base game separately in some cases. It made sense for them to charge one hundred dollars or more for a Collector’s edition when you got statues, maps, dice, etc. along with the physical game disc. Now they want to charge the same amount WITHOUT the physical extras and also without the physical discs with cases. If you know anything about the world of manufacturing then you know that game publishers are able to have things made in bulk at a discounted rate. If they aren’t confident in the game sales they can short the stock and then have more made if the demand is there. The problem is that a lot of games that they predicted as smash hits have bombed. They no longer trust the consumer to pay for what they are putting out. So, instead of I don’t know changing what they put out to please the consumer and improve the sales margins they decide to stay the course but lower their losses by going digital. This allows them to keep more of the money with less risk to them. It is however not good for the consumer since they get no benefits from it other than not having to swap discs. Being lazy is not a reward nor is it rewarding. I do realize that there are disabled gamers out there where not having to swap discs is a huge bonus for them. I’m not advocating for the complete abolishment of the digital marketplace. I am advocating for the games to be complete in both the digital and the physical world. For the gaming market to become consumer friendly once more.

There are gaming museums and/or gaming historical archives popping up here in the United States. Their mission is to catalogue as much of the history of gaming by having copies of as many titles as they can from the original Pong going forward. There are games that have been lost to time because the original source code, cartridge, etc. have been destroyed or lost. Companies are reluctant to give copies of the source code, games, artwork, etc. to these museums and archives because of the fear of the IP being misused or distributed illegally. Going all digital like they are pushing will make even harder for museums and the archives to catalogue gaming history going forward.

It really does confuse and frighten me a little that most of the same people that talk about how greedy corporations are that then these same people are trusting them to continue to allow access to things we pay for digitally. It’s either one or the other. We can either trust corporations to be nice to consumers or we can realize that we are nothing but numbers on a spread sheet for them and fight them for continued good treatment by getting guarantees that protect our rights without having to do class action lawsuits in the future to correct things. A good rule of thumb is that if you can’t download it to store offline or play it offline then you don’t really own it. As of the time of this writing the only digital only things that all me to completely download and do whatever I want with them are music mp3s and games that I buy from GOG. Everywhere else that I have knowledge of currently doesn’t allow for it… and that is a scary future for consumer rights.

Final Fantasy XVI – A Review

I am first going to talk about the things I liked in the game before I get to what made me ultimately quit and move on to other titles in my backlog.

The graphics are fantastic. The battle system is great and I liked that they added in accessories that allowed for simplicity instead of having to worry about memorizing all the different button combinations. The story in the beginning is great and I really got into disliking the mother for how she was treating her sons and manipulating her husband. I also loved that there was at least one Moogle.

Now, onto the dislikes. Please keep in mind that this is opinion.

The story gets complicated and branches off in a super weird way that is never explained in a way that satisfied me and doesn’t fit within any of the Final Fantasy mythos that I’ve experienced through either watching others play or playing myself.

The game play is chopped up into segments instead of being an open world like the previous title was. As such having a Chocobo was useless except in a couple of places since you fast traveled to the “main” area of the quest you were on and then could further fast travel within those smaller maps.

There are TONS of cut scenes and a lot of them feel unneeded when a simple conversation while standing next to the character you were talking to would have worked just as well.

Also, there isn’t a lot of explanation on hand in the beginning of the storyline to show things like the illness that magic causes… Clive never sees anyone dying of it or inflicted with it until much much later in the game so the player doesn’t know it is a thing even though all the characters act like it was always an issue. Also, it bugged me that they labelled the Phoenix as fire instead of healing AND that despite Joshua being the embodiment of it he was always sick… Also, unless you know the mythos of the bird in question his survival after the beat down he got.. and his appearance in the “past” doesn’t make sense.

Finally, I quit the game out of frustration and boredom. I really loved Final Fantasy XV. It is the first and only Final Fantasy to date that I bought and finished all the way through. I even bought all the DLCs for it, the collector’s game guide, AND the soundtrack. The changes that Square Enix had wrought made the game fun and engaging to me while in this latest installment feels over all like it went backwards. Once I quit Final Fantasy XVI I looked up the rest of the story and I am so glad I quit instead of forcing myself to see it through. A world without magic? In a Final Fantasy game? You know the fantasy genre requires mystical/magical mythos yes? So this game is a bubble in and of itself. That is unless they’ve decided to turn the series into a plain fiction setting and they are going to change the title going forward… then again it is rare that despite the numbering and shared title that the story lines actually work within the same world or origin. I should have stuck with boycotting it like I was going to when I found out that it wasn’t a continuation of the storyline from XV.

I do not recommend this title at all. We will see if they fix it in the next one.

Game Review: Saints Row (2022)

I am a big fan of the Saints Row franchise. I’ve been playing since the first one came out on the Xbox 360. It started off as a GTA clone but eventually established it’s own voice in the genre. The game story lines got bigger, more campy, and crazy as the series went on eventually getting to Ruler of the Universe and Time Traveler level of hilarity.

I decided to pre-order the Notorious Edition of the new Saints Row. I sat down and played it for hours last night.

The devs decided to reboot the franchise this year with Saints Row. Set in a completely new setting that reminds me of Las Vegas called Santo Ileso. As always you play as The Boss, but, in this one the Saints don’t exist yet. You and your roommates decide after some things go down (trying to avoid heavy spoilers) to start your own criminal enterprise… The Saints.

The story flow so far is slow. They made some of the game mechanics and features only unlockable through the story line instead of it just being there in the game already. Side jobs (side hustles) start off as only a few different types but expand as you play the game. Hidden collectables, dumpster diving, and the Wanted list are also there for distraction. Just like Saints Row 3 and forward you can collect vehicles as well by jacking them and taking them to your garage. There are hours and hours of things to do outside of the main story line.

I don’t like the healing method they are using in the game. In the old ones you got health pickups from killing the enemies. In this one you get one health boost (it doesn’t heal you completely) every so often. Even if you kill a lot of enemies it still takes longer than I would like to get ready, killing speeds up the timer, it can lead to some really frustrating game play where you are literally running and dodging around in circles just to keep alive while waiting for it to pop. Oh, and the default difficulty level is good for co-op. Not so good for solo because trying to aim the guns is frustrating as heck. It auto aims for the body and then fights you if you try to aim anywhere else which makes being accurate super hard. I looked in the settings and couldn’t find anything to tone down or turn this feature off. I would be aiming down sights and it would bounce from one side of the enemies head to the other at a nudge from the stick even if I wasn’t firing.

Co-op at the time of this blog is broken. My buddy and I ended up at a point right in the beginning section that just wouldn’t move forward. We tried it twice before giving up and completing it solo before teaming back up. We can’t see each other when we aren’t right next to each other because we aren’t highlighted in world for the other player. I can’t see him on the map at all to pin point his location if we decided to go explore different locations. Later on in the story line he was forcibly disconnected from me by the game right before a cut scene. This caused the game to almost freeze to the point that I thought I was going to have to close it all the way out and come back in. Then once the cut scene finally played through the game wouldn’t let him reconnect. After this we decided to solo play until the co-op is fixed. This feature being broken at launch when it was being sold as key to the game is frustrating. It also reminds me of Dying Light 2 which is not a good thing. My friend and I go out of our way to buy titles that we can play online together because that is the only time we get to hang out with each other even though we live in the same city.

Over all if you like the Saint Row franchise you will love this game… clarification. If you love the original game and the second one the most of all the titles then you will love this one. The story line is more toned down even with the comedy involved in it.

Second Life -Sexy Football Photoshoot

I recently decided to change over to a different mesh head and change up how I look in Second Life. To celebrate and have some fun I decided to do a sexy American Football photoshoot to show off my good looks! The photos have not been edited or touched up in any way.

Style Card:

Body – Signature Gianni

Head – LeLUTKA Devon

Head Skin – Stray Dog Bento 06

Body Skin – Stray Dog Gianni Shaved + Freckles 06

Eyes – Euphoric – Dolly Babe Eyes LeLUTKA Applier

Body Hair – [J’AVAE] Body Hair Series S1 Black – Extra Light

Eyebrows – Stray Dog Ford HD Eyebrows Scarred

Hair Base – Volkstone Rocky Hairbase / Black V1 100% tinted with Dark Grey to make the sides darker.

Facial Hair – Volkstone Wendel Facial Hair / 02 tinted Black

Facial Scars – LeLUTKA.EvoX.Scar.04.L and 02.L (comes with the head)

Top – (Discontinued) THIRST – Crop Top – Jersey – Gianni

Jeans – [Deadwool] Kojima Jeans – Gianni – (deep cuffs)

Sneakers – Casual Sneakers BlackWhite – Signature (Found for free at London City or Helping Haven I can’t remember.)

Piercings – LeLUTKA.Png.DEVON Ear, Lip, and Nose (comes with the head)

Underwear – Cubura Vintage XL Jocks – Gianni

Poses – [..::CuCa Designs::..] Football Time Male Poseset (It comes with the football set for the different poses.)

Location – SL Cheerleading Squad / Srooc Skytower Memorial Stadium, Cheertopia

Summer of ’58 – Tale of Refund Abuse

Today I was watching one of my favorite Twitch streamers Azuki. She was playing this horror game called “Summer of ’58”. It looked really cool. In the stream chat I was told that the developers have walked away from game making for the foreseeable future because players on Steam have been abusing the refund policy.

See, on Steam if you have played less than two hours on a game you can request a no questions asked full refund. The issue with the policy when it comes to “Summer of ’58” is that the game is only around 90 minutes long. At least that is the average player time. This means that people can pay for the already cheap title which is $9 USD when not on sale and then turn around and get that money back after finishing the entire game. A lot of people online are suggesting a policy change to keep indie developers like EMIKA_Games from being punished financially for making games that are shorter due to budget or personnel constraints. The most common suggestion that I have seen is to make it so that if the end game achievement has been unlocked then no refund is to be given along with the two hour limit that is the current policy.

Now, onto the game. “Summer of ’58” is an awesome horror title. Instead of running around fighting zombies or other paranormal entities you are just a youtuber or other website investigator. So you are armed with a camcorder and your keen eye. There are a lot of jump scares, the ambient sound is stellar, and the pacing is just enough to build tension without being too quick or slow which can be an issue with some games of the same type in other genres, “Everyone’s Gone to the Rapture” for example which artificially lengthened the game by making you walk like a geriatric using a walker which detracts from how beautiful the scenery is and the fantastic story involved at times.

I love the fact that even after you beat the game you can go back into individual levels so that you can do achievement hunting or experience the best of the jump scares all over again.

I will be playing the other two games the same developer has released as I decided to buy the bundle during the current sale instead of just the one title in support for them and encouragement for them to return to at least finish the title that they had announced that is now TBA.

Quitting Sea of Thieves – Rare and the Encouragement of Bullying

Now, I fully admit that I am not an aggressive person in real life and that translates into the video game world when it comes to multiplayer titles. I also have bad depth perception and reaction times which makes games like Call of Duty: Warzone and such a bad idea since the rapid response and fuck everyone attitude you need for that kind game just stresses me out. This is why I tend to either play single player titles only or games that have taken an extra step to give players choice in how they wish to engage other players. Some examples of this are Fallout 76, Ark, and Rust.

In Fallout 76 they have made it so that you can turn on a pacifist mode which makes it so that you can’t damage others and they can’t damage you. The only three exceptions to this are Workshops, Nuclear Winter (Battle Royale Mode), and hacker/cheaters. Hackers/Cheaters are more on the PC version than on console. They also introduced Private Worlds, admittedly for a monthly or yearly fee, that makes it so you can play the game single player if you wish to do so or with a limited amount of trusted friends.

In Ark the developers made it so that you can make custom servers that eliminate PVP, lower it, or you can play single player.

In Rust on PC they are about to introduce private servers from what a friend told me. They already have custom servers but they don’t give the same amount of options that Ark does. Though of the three choices for my examples this one is less like the others when it comes to progression, etc. Rust really doesn’t have it at all. Yes you can learn plans, earn scrap/money, etc. but there isn’t any real leveling or reputation with guilds that happens.

Now, the reason why I am bringing all this up is that I started playing a game about a year ago now called Sea of Thieves. I first experienced it as a viewer on Twitch streams from players that I knew personally in real life and others. They made it look like a lot of fun and while there was PVP in their streams most of them didn’t go looking for it. The issue with this introduction is that they were rarely playing solo. The smallest crews they ever have most of the time is two. All of the players are veterans that had been playing since early access as well. So they made the game look simple and fun. Which IS true when you take most player interactions out of the equation. Though I will give some credit Rare has tried to limit the amount of ships/players on a server so there ARE days where there are no other ships that I have to interact with but those days aren’t often.

There are huge threads on multiple forums talking about the game mechanics, player interaction, and the like. The only one that Rare seems to pay attention to is the official one. I in fact doubt that this blog post that I am writing will even get read by anyone that works for them unless I go and send them the link myself and even then they might just dismiss it out of hand. This attitude I have towards Rare has a basis because of how they have chosen to handle the MASSIVE issue that is negative player interaction.

According to everything that I have been told by other players, read online, and seen in game Rare saw this as a game that had the opportunity to have a wonderful, playful, respectful PVPVE world. They didn’t take into account that if you have no real rules but more of an honor system, and no real enforcement of what rules you do have except for extremes that you would end up with a not so player friendly environment. When people complain about negative player interactions in the game that really are bullying, emotionally toxic, mentally toxic, energy draining from morale tanking when you are attacked for no reason doing Tall Tales with no loot, etc. The other players give out various responses like, Don’t play alone, Git Good, It’s Sea of Thieves not Sea of Friends, You don’t like what happens then go some where else, Don’t be a whiner, Then fight back, and it goes on and on. When it is pointed out that the game is supposed to be about player choice when it comes to how we each play the game they try to point out that going around attacking other players even if they run or don’t fight back IS how they want to play the game. They don’t see that they are FORCING their choices on others. If the ship runs without firing a single shot at them, if they try to talk without being aggressive or salty, if they offer an alliance without being aggressive/salty or fighting back at all then those players are showing how they want to play the game and the attacking players should respect that. However, they don’t. They continue to chase, fire on, sink, and generally harass the peaceful players. Rare encourages this type of behavior by making the Reaper Faction, and then they MADE tucking emotes so that other players can hide on your ship and harass you or track you. Their response to players spawn camping others on their ships was to introduce the scuttle ship option in the pause menu. This means if you get attacked and the other crew fixes your ship then continues to kill you each time you spawn onto your ship before you can even move your only option is to just sink your ship in a way that the enemy can’t fix. Most of the time that I get sunk in the game the other players don’t even take my loot. Some of them will call me names or say things like I suck, etc. It doesn’t seem like a big deal to most people because it’s JUST trash talking right?

The issue is that trash talking can be comedic to those saying the trash, but, can have long lasting mental/emotional effects to those that have it said to them because it is verbal bullying. Calling someone a Bitch for running from you while you fire on them when they asked to be left alone and didn’t fight back? Telling someone that they are trash when you board their ship and continuously kill them until they scuttle their ship just to get away from you? The real life versions of this would get most people a visit from another parent or the cops but because it’s just a video game they are given leeway to do it without any consequences. The only times I have heard anything being done about this behavior even when it is reported is if they use homophobic or racist language. Seriously? Do you realize the breath and width of the English language? You can get very, very damaging without ever using a cuss word, slang, or racist/homophobic language. This has caused a lot of the player base to which this is happening to just not report it because they have lost trust in Rare to do anything about it.

PvE VS PvP is a hot debate on a lot of the forums. There have been suggestions of a PvE only server that I fully support. This would allow for people like me to play while making friends with other like minded people. People who like to team up to defeat the Skeleton Forts, or other World Events. People who don’t mind negotiating who gets what loot at the end of the event. People who want to Alliance so that everyone benefits from the work they are putting into turning in loot, etc. Those of us suggesting this PvE server have even made it clear that we wouldn’t mind only getting say 25% of the gold and reputation points for all the loot items we turn in as a penalty for playing on that server instead of the normal one because a lot of salty people that don’t want the PVE servers to happen scream about how unfair it would be for us to have no consequences which would allow us to build up rep and gold faster than they could on the normal servers. They seem to forget that we would still be fighting skeleton ships, the kraken, and megalodons which for some crews can get a little overwhelming and sink them, but, we would still take that hit on how much we earn to make it ‘fair’.

What is fair really? Most of the players that would play in the PVE servers are those of us who get sunk on a regular basis and lose all of our progress for those hours we just spent and the people who sank us if they stick around to grab the loot get to benefit from our hard work for maybe five to ten minutes of gameplay to sink us. Some of the most prolific streamers will make MILLIONS in gold within a four to six hour stream just from going around sinking other players. They will camp world events that have high payouts like the Fort of the Damned and then attack the players that spent the time getting all the resources together to do that event. Yes there is an element of chance, but, those prolific players? They are usually the ones that have tons of skill, know all the exploits and WILL take full advantage of them. Like double gunning, running with loot, spawn camping while the boat sinks, etc. They are rarely the ones actually doing the events themselves unless they can’t find anyone to go after currently on the server. Even Azuki one of the nicer Twitch partners for Sea of Thieves that I watch will go after other ships more often than doing the events. Though I have seen her and her crew do some of them depending on what their goal was for the day.

Unless Rare starts to crack down on the bullying behaviors, opens up a PVE server, or puts in a way for players to chose to be pacifists like Fallout 76 has done I don’t think the game will live very long. Yes, putting in new content and seasons has helped keep some people playing but they are losing people daily. People like me. I am as of today quitting the game unless I am doing a Discord group thing. Which means I am not buying another Plunder Pass, I am not grinding another season, and I am not going to be buying anymore cosmetics for the foreseeable future. I am tired of getting onto the game all energized and ready to sail the seas, kill some npc enemies, and have fun doing tall tales only to have someone or multiple someone’s treat me like shit and take all the fun out of the game.

Review – Saints Row the Third Remaster – PS4 Slim

I have been a HUGE Saints Row fan since the very first game. What started off as a GTA clone turned into it’s own goofy and unique personality in the gangster genre that was so popular in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.

When I heard that they were doing a remaster for the third game I was excited and hopeful. I didn’t expect the dumpster fire that it turned into. What the hell where the developers for the remaster thinking?! As if it wasn’t bad enough that Shaundi was revamped from the second game to the third to take away the likeness of the previous voice actress (Eliza Dushku). They made her look nothing like before! It’s like they decided to hit her with the fugly stick for some unknown reason. They also changed a few of the other characters making them almost unrecognisable!

On top of the character models being down right nasty they made a lot of the clothing worse than before, textures that used to look almost real in the original are missing or just plain worse in the remaster.

If you decide to give your character black hair you better get used to it looking dove grey as the colors are all off by a little or a lot which I admit was a slight problem in the original as well. But, with as bad as this is in the remaster it is like the developers decided that Volition/Deep Silver issued a challenge to make it worse and they said, “Hold my beer.”

The game also has performance issues. Frame drops, almost freezing, and more which was massively annoying considering how smooth the original is in comparison.

If you are a fan of the series like me I would recommend skipping the remaster and praying that the next Saints Row game isn’t a shit show on par with a lot of other titles that have been coming out extremely broken lately.

Call of Duty: Warzone – Rant

I play COD Warzone. I have never played any other COD game. I got into it because I made a friend on Twitch who plays it on stream but he is playing with randoms most of the time. I enjoy it though I find myself yelling at the screen more often than not.

There are various modes in the game Battle Royale, Plunder, and more. My favorite mode is Plunder. You and your team run around gathering money in order to get to 1 million first.

My rant is about the other players that do this mode. The point of the mode is to gather the most money. It isn’t to get the most kills though there are certain activities that do put forth pvp like bounty hunting, etc. I have repeatedly been put with randoms (I am grinding the season to 100 so I need to play A LOT.) that don’t understand this concept. They choose the top three locations that everyone drops to so that they can get sweaty and get the most kills. *face palm* You don’t get money for kills. Not everyone has money on them when they die so there is no point in just going around killing people. Now, if you are killing people while running around grabbing money from the various supply boxes and building that is one thing. But, staying in one place and waiting for people to come to you or going back to the same place you are being killed at repeatedly is just insanely stupid. You get the most XP by getting the most money, being in the top ten, being in the top five, or being first which nets you the most. Combat actually gets you the smallest amount of XP. I’ve gotten six or more kills in a round while not getting much money and ended up with less than 10k in experience.

Hey morons! Worry more about making money and less about measuring your cock with the amount of kills you get in PLUNDER MODE! You want to prove your manhood with the amount of kills you get? Play Battle Royale or Resurrection!

Days Gone – Iron Mike’s an Idiot – Opinion

I’ve been replaying Bend Studios title Days Gone. It is one of my favorite games. The story is awesome with great pacing, the gameplay is good though it does have its moments, and in general the leveling and unlock systems are good even if it does take almost getting the game at 100% across the board.

One thing always stuck with me though. Iron Mike. This guy who went through a lot of stuff and was one of two survivors of a massacre in a nearby town right after all that freaker shit started to go down. I get his guilt over what happened, but, he has the wrong idea on things. He can choose what he does and he can try to force those same ideals on the others in his camp, but, he can’t force those on the greater world. He has such a focus on stopping people from killing each other that he can’t see the forest for the trees.

The Rippers weren’t going to stop because their very ideology made it so that they had to kill or convert people. This is on top of what he learns about how Carlos wants Deacon and Boozer. The leader of the group wants people he is trying to protect? That is never going to bring peace with a group like the Rippers.

He allowed division in his own camp by not actually doing something about Skizzo’s plotting to take over. This affects moral and the ability for everyone to trust each other. Then after he learns what Skizzo was willing to do in selling out Deacon and Boozer as well as sacrificing the others in camp so that Carlos could get what he wanted even after the treaty was blown by him convincing Deacon to go over the border and using that as an excuse? I’m sorry. I would have let Deacon and Boozer have him. One, because he has shown that he can not be trusted with the lives of the camp members and Two, he was the god damned security chief! He knows the ins and outs of the camp! Weaknesses, Strengths, and who is unhappy there with the things the way they are! He just lets him go!

This was a HUGELY Idiotic move. I know that later in the story this comes back to bite him in the ass hard, but, come on. Anyone that survived all that he has should know better. Deacon doesn’t set out to kill people just because he can. Those that he does are for the safety of all and are people that can not be changed or forced to repent. He uses the training that he learned in the military to protect everyone. Yes, it also helps him most of the time, but, he wouldn’t have become as famous or trusted as a worker for all the camps even before you start the game if he didn’t know how to be a decent man.

With the way Iron Mike acts I can’t help to have the opinion that he is a blind idiot that was just plain lucky to have had his camp survive as it had and as it does later after he is killed.

Greedfall – Review

Today I was able to finally get my hands on Greedfall. I borrowed it from my local library. I had heard good things about it from MrPattyPlays on YouTube.

I’m sorry but it sucks. The controls are all wonky, the camera is motion sickness inducing, and the game fucks up it’s own quests!

I was in the middle of a side quest trying to take a guy back to his cart when the game decided to go into a cut scene about the main quest. This caused me to fail in the escort side of the mission I was already on!

The development team decided to assign the buttons instead of the bumpers and triggers for attack and block/dodge which makes fighting very irritating especially when they add in special attacks that use the triggers/bumpers and assignment slots to the directional pad. This is counter intuitive to just about every role playing game in the current market.

The camera is horrid. It either does swing enough or it does it too fast. It isn’t completely centered on the main character so it makes having something for your eyes to focus on hard to do which make motion sickness a real issue for me.

I sure there are a lot of people that have and will enjoy this title but I am not one of them. I only played an hour and by the end I was starting to get nauseated, a mild headache, and then I rage quit when the game made me fail a mission because it had a trigger to activate a cutscene do to proximity instead of having the quest active and then being nearby instead so that it wouldn’t mess with what you were already doing. If they wanted you to go a certain way for the escort quest I was going then they should have had a golden line or a more obvious pathway for it instead of what was actually going on.