Realism: Bad For Video Games?

   

  I'm 24, my first console that i owned was a Super Nintendo(SNES), and the first game I ever  recall playing was Super Mario World. I don't remember my experiences with it really, but it gave me a basis for this weird little red hat wearing character named Mario was. Suddenly around my 4th birthday my grandfather got me a Nintendo 64, and a copy of Super Mario 64, suddenly Mario wasn't a little sprite anymore. He was alive, he spoke, he got hurt, he had emotion(although limited). This is the classic rant that people have when they saw the transition from 2-D graphics to 3-D graphics. it was huge. I've seen the transition personally. Many people older than me claim "I had an Atari", my issue with this, is that most of them never really cared for video games afterwards. So some of those people didn't go through this awkward transition of a weird flip in mindset in developers. To make a good game, you need:

• Good Gameplay
• Good Story
• Good Visuals

      Over the last few years our games with human characters have been becoming more visually stunning constantly, however, s, it seemed all difficulty in making realistic people making ridiculous unrealistic things, games become limited, and unoriginal. A lot of these games start to rely on QTE's or Quick Time Events, in which a player basically watches a small cutscene in which at some point they have to hit a pattern of buttons as they show up on the screen. While cool, it's a real disconnect from the game and takes away from the amazing visuals going on in the game itself. Realism also limits story as well, at that point most video games with realistic stories resort to become shooting games. Games become emotionless almost. Character faces usually can never be as expressive as a human face no matter how much motion capture you can use, and it especially doesn't help if you have any sort of bad graphic designers.....(cough cough Mass Effect).

                                           (Dunkey is much more humorous about this)

     Now, I'm not saying that games with hyper realistic graphics are bad, there are plenty of games such as Heavy Rain, that have been praised worldwide, but just to use that as an example, it had more going for it than graphics. Although this is a game that i can also use as an example of realism causing games to work off of QTE's the story was what really made the game, as well as how the story is played. The game plays more like a movie than anything, but the few factors of exploration, and the desire to keep the multitudes of characters in the story alive, make the game exciting.

Although Cartoony, this game is beautiful.

     Realistic graphics are touchy, they want to make things as real as possible, there needs to be a balance of keeping things realistic, all while making a decent disconnect to remind you that this is a fun game, without causing the player to be completely disconnected from the experience itself. If you look at a game like Call of Duty, which people buy because it is a realistic military shooting game, there's also over the top story mode, and an adrenaline fueled multiplayer that go way past realism,
 and therefore making the game, a game.

"Lo0k InTo mY SouL"

   This is overall a very touchy subject, people respond differently, and have different opinions. In my opinion this was a very huge issue up to this year. However in 2017, it seems developers have embraced the idea that a game doesn't have to look like what they look at every day to be a beautiful/good game. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild for instance, uses a more water painted art style that although "cartoony", it's environment are beauttiful, it has a fun story, and a fluid balance of exploration and combat that have all melded together to make it one of the most praised and sought after video games of the decade. There's so much to talk about when it comes to graphics it can be a little bit overwhelming to talk about, even now towards the end of this i still feel like i can rant about this forever....I won't. All i can say is that I'm glad/ still hoping that developers are following the age old rule the community keeps yelling out "GAMEPLAY FIRST"!

                                                          (I had to throw this in)
   

   

Twitcb: A Rocky Start-Off

          As kids, me and my friends always enjoyed showing each other what we might've recently done in a video game, and watch each other accomplish what we would say was impossible, while having a good time along the way. Twitch made it possible for people to do this on a global scale, and has become the biggest platform for not only individual channels but even international events and tournaments. Twitch has helped the idea of competitive gaming become a very real and very big thing, to the point that while I was at a bar, one of the Sports channels was showing a Counter Strike tournament on ESPN. I personally started a Twitch channel a few months ago, it's fun, but gaining a following has been difficult for me. I'm not expecting to have 10k followers and subscribers and to be noticed enough to gain a sponsorship for a team, in two months, but I'm still only getting 1-4 viewers a stream. This is sort of a let down, but after talking with a few fellow streamers and some online reading, I've realized what I'm doing wrong, or not enough of.

Streaming Late       I personally don't stream until after 10 o'clock and will stream until about midnight. Speaking to a fellow streamer, he told me that this was an issue, especially as a small channel. Most people who are willing to explore the depths of twitch channels earlier in the evening. It's hard to gain a following especially with slow paced games when the audience is tired. 

The type of thing i see while streaming Splatoon 2

Lacking Commentary      I always watched other channels and always figured "I can talk to myself forever that's easy"....I was wrong, I'm never sure what to talk about, this however is just something I personally have to work on. 

Consistency
       My biggest issue is consistency. Sadly this falls on multiple things. Like I said,  I usually end up streaming late at night, but i also stream on random days. Looking at other channels, and user articles on Reddit, bigger Twitch channels with a following have a schedule. Like any TV show, they stream on a certain day and a certain time. This gives people a chance to know when to come back to your stream. I try to keep a schedule but end up failing. This is all about discipline so I just need to make a more solid schedule.   

Riding this bear did bring a few laughs with my small audience not going to lie

The Switch: A Personal Review

This year, one of the biggest technological development erupted in the video game industry, a high definition portable/home console called the switch. After the flop that was the Wii U, with its underwhelming library of games, a disappointing graphical performance, and a terrible marketing campaign that proved Nintendo had no idea who their demographic was at the time, it almost seemed like hope was lost for them. Suddenly, October 2016,  a trailer showing a 20-something year old guy playing what seemed to be a new version of the beloved Legend of Zelda series.....and suddenly he picks up a tablet from a dock on the TV......all composure was lost at that point. The system looked comfortable, visually it seemed stunning, and it was like, Nintendo realized that the main people who still follow them these days aren't kids, but rather the people who grew up with Nintendo in the 80's and 90's. It was like a light shined from the heavens and we all felt like Nintendo got it right, but we needed more; More to prove that we weren't going to be let down again. January 2017, Nintendo gave us quite a bit more with an hour long presentation going over system details, specs, and a few game releases. Most of us were convinced and excited for the suddenly announced March release.........I didn't get mine on release I got mine in May....

A Strong Release

The system since its announcement was and has been sold out almost everywhere, It is overall a huge success, becoming the most successful selling console of the year. However, Nintendo has been sending very small amounts of consoles to stores. Some Gamestops would only get 2 or 3 every time they get "Restocked", I personally got lucky and found a Best Buy that had 9 Switch's in their

shipment, and this was 2 months after the release of the console. There are many rumors as to why there is such a low supply, but there is a very high demand for the console. Nintendo for sure needs to fix this issue by the holidays or they very well could lose both returning customers and new customers who have gotten a sudden interest in the Switch.

Immediately Familiar

The first thing I did as i turned on my fancy new Switch, was admire the sleek look of the tablet and the two "Joyqon" controllers that go on the side of the Switch. It felt decently comfortable in the Handheld mode, but the controllers on the side are flat and can be slightly awkward especially if you have bigger hands, but I have never found myself not wanting to play it in handheld mode. I got a pair of grips with the carrying case that I got for it and immediately made it as comfortable as i wanted it without them. The Joyqon controllers overall are small and I personally prefer to use my

Pro controller, but that means investing another $70 towards a controller to get the optimal experience when you are playing the system on the TV. In the mean time though, the Switch comes with a grip where you can connect the Joyqons together to make it like a whole controller and for the first two months of me owning the system, it definitely did the job, and i still use them like that when a friend comes over and wants to play Mario Kart.

A Lot To Play....But Is It Enough?

On release, the Switch got probably the best release title "Legend of Zelda: The Breath of  the Wild". The game is a huge, visually stunning game with hundreds of hours of gameplay with a giant world and plenty to explore and do, AND WE CAN TAKE IT ANYWHERE! It was the perfect game to prove to us what this little machine could do, running a 720p HD display handheld, and 1080p on television mode. 

Since release plenty of other gems have been released by Nintendo's first party development team. ARMS, Nintendo's new IP, gained quite a bit of attention upon release with its fun, springy armed, arena boxing action. Splatoon 2 became a sequel nobody knew they wanted, causing system sales to grow even more. The library will only continue to grow this year, Super Mario Odyssey comes out at the end of the months as well as the seemingly growing support of third party developers coming out with big Triple-A games like "Wolfenstein" and "Doom".

Along with these big games comes a decent collection of Indie games ready to download at any time in the Nintendo eShop, so there's plenty of different game experiences to choose from. Indie developers so far are loving the switch and what it can do, not to mention that these games are perfect for a portable console since so many of them are the type of game that are easy to put down.

I'm overall very impressed with this first year for the games of the Switch. I personally remember when i got a Playstation 4, the launch lineup was very weak, and I almost felt like it was a paperweight for about 5 months before i really got any use of it.

OOOOOOOO.....so close

So overall it seems I'm quite satisfied with the Switch right? I like the Console, the design, and the games so far, Nintendo has realized they just need to make fun games, with no Motion control gimmicks, and solid gameplay, but if it's one thing that they don't seem to understand, it's the internet. Nintendo has never done too well with online games, and they have shown with their new Splatoon series that they want to delve more into the competitive side of gaming and want people to be a community. However Nintendo's actions do the exact OPPOSITE of that. They finally integrated a "Friends list" system, but unlike in every other console since 2006, you cannot communicate with your friends easily, if at all really. Nintendo didn't implement voice chat directly on the system, but rather made a phone application where you can talk to people. This was announced a few months back, and it already caused me a great unease. When it was released my fears were nothing compared to the real thing. I personally thought that maybe we would just invite our friend into a chat room like Discord and we could all communicate there. Instead you can only communicate with people in the same game and lobby as you. There's no way to invite your friends into a game with you and right now the only game that even offers this service with the app is Splatoon 2. 

This is quite frustrating, as much as Nintendo says that they aim for "community" and "competition" every function that they have implemented prevent that. Right now it is virtually impossible to play with friends unless you can communicate with them through other means, so unless you personally know the people personally, and you have 8 people to fill up a private lobby, you won't be talking to anybody. This is even more frustrating since the ability to add players you recently played with as friends. There's no way to say hello and establish a connection with those people. Not to mention that even if you do get a lobby of friends to play, you cannot leave the app or even put your phone on hold to prevent battery drainage.

Nintendo announced that starting next year, they're going the route that Microsoft and Sony have of setting up the online play as a paid service. Although they announced it at a cheap $20 a year (cheap compared to Xbox Live and PSPlus $60), it's still disconcerting that they are going to ask us to pay for a service that is as flawed as it is, seeing as online communications are as limited as they are. If we are to pay for a service, it needs to be functioning, and clean. 

Final Thoughts

The Switch is an amazing console, i've sunk the last 5 months into my switch alone without realzing i haven;t used any of my consoles since i bought it. The games are all fun and beautiful, there's so much already to enjoy and more to come. Can the console be a tad bit more comfortable? Yes, but due to the design it's going to stay where it's at. The biggest thing Nintendo needs to to fix is their online interactions and systems, let me talk with friends.....let me make friends......from there the console would be almost perfect for the community driven games that Nintendo is releasing.

OLDIES! Both Old and New

90'S KIDS ROLLOUT

Comes with 2 Controllers for friendly ass kickings in Street Fighter

This week we've finally seen the release of the Nintendo SNES Classic Mini, a rerelease of the popular 90's game system from the "golden era" of gaming, when things were simpler. But depth was stating to develop in games. so more imaginative stories were coming to life, more power meant more to work with and developers took full advantage of that.

The system has been released at a $80 retail price, which isn't bad, it's pre loaded with 20 of the top SNES games, which is amazing, the only issue is how hard it is to get your hands on one already. Over the passed few months, Nintendo fans have been on the lookout for this amazing little gem(Including me) but with limited supplies and a weird time to start pre-orders for the console, it's become quite unavailable and has sold out immediately almost everywhere(Trust me I've checked). N

The best Monkeys are back!

The games pre loaded on the SNES Classic Mini are:

• Super Mario World
• F-Zero
• Super Mario Kart
• Donkey Kong Country
• Earthbound
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of The Seven Stars
• Secret of Mana
• Star Fox
• Star Fox 2(A PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED GAME)
• Final Fantasy 3(Also known as FF 6 outside of the US)
• Super Metroid
• Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past
• Super Street Fighter 2

  

  FF3 finale looks amazing

• Super CastleVania 4
• Super Punch-Out
• Mega Man X
• Contra 3
• Kirby Super Star
• Kirby's Dream Course

So if you want to relive the nostalgia truly presented in the 90's be on the lookout for one of these babies, At first they might be sold out everywhere, but according to Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America, there will be "Plenty of stock" and not to buy any ridiculously priced scalped systems like a lot of people did with last year's NES Classic.

An Old looking Newbie

This week brought another highly anticipated release that has been development for five years now, the 1930's cartoon inspired game, "Cuphead"

Cuphead N Mugman

If you haven't heard of "Cuphead" it's a charming little action-platforming hell shooter influenced by games like "Metal Slug" and "Mega Man", where enemies and projectiles are flying at you from all directions keeping you on your toes the entire time. As expected, this game is quite hard, so you have to stop yourself from getting distracted from its highly animated and cutesy backgrounds of crazy Disney-esque looking animals all bobbing up and down to the gram-a-phone filled, crazy piano, cartoony soundtrack.

CAAAAAAAAAKE

This is probably one of the biggest releases of the year, and i'm quite excited to pick up a copy. Planning on this being the first game I review on this blog.

Amazingly animated style