Tag: Opinion

Why Married With Children Wouldn’t Work In 2019

Every so often someone asks the question, why don;y we have a Married With Children Spinoff like Married With Grandchildren? Well, truth be told, for the same reason The Office wouldn’t work according to Steve Carell. Except even worse as the show is much older and possibly even more offensive by the standards of today.

For the younger readers, and those that lived in a cave from 1987 until 1997, the show was about the Bundy family. The middle-class family in Chicago is the American dream, husband and wife, one son and one daughter owns a home and a dog. Don’t ask me how they are middle-class, Al Bundy is a shoe salesman and his wife doesn’t work. He tells us this constantly that he hates his job and the fat slobs that come in there. By the way, this is a recurring theme. He routinely insults the women that come in. Here is a clip.

As you can see, while funny this would probably piss a lot of people off. Don’t get me wrong, if a person acted like that in real life he would rightfully get punched in the face and so would half the women, but it still wouldn’t likely go well today.

Other issues are his relationship with his wife Peggy. Now they obviously love each other, hell despite his claims of hating her he had multiple chances to cheat and never did and rarely truly disrespected her. But the jokes today would be a huge line many wouldn’t like being crossed.

He also has similar things to say about his female neighbor tho he is best friends with her husbands. (She has 2 throughout the show)

The show is just full of humor that by today’s standards would be viewed as degrading towards, well everyone honestly. Even Al, who is constantly made fun of for being a loser shoe salesman whose best days were in high school. The show is literally built around insults, but they are used to show that while they talk to each other a certain way they are a family that loves each other. Al has multiple chances to cheat on Peggy but never does. Peggy while lazy and insulting to her husband actually does cook him dinner and make sure he is taken care of, and later on, when she wants to get a job Al supports her even tho half the show is him making fun of feminist, tho admittedly the over the top feminist most people make fun of. Sadly however in today’s world shows like this and The Office won’t really do well on T.V. without upsetting people, and a lot of companies won’t want to risk it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Almost Podcast time

Ok now Admittedly I wanted to get this started by now but with the holidays and some technical difficulties, things got pushed back a bit. That being said we are getting ready to start recording these things.  The plan is for them to be about an hour long and them to be released every 2 weeks until we see how they go. They will be the pretty standard format of just gaming and nerd related stuff much like the blog itself is tho we want to have a sort of questions and answer time. So please feel free to shoot us a message on Twitter or facebook or even an email and we will answer your questions as time allows. Feel free to ask about anything you want and unless you say otherwise we will keep all names and such private. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Why the IGN “Mistakes” Are A Big Deal

Recently in the gaming world, IGN has been talked about quite a lot. This is normal considering they are pretty much the biggest name in gaming news. And yes they have been the subject of many memes and jokes over the years such as the Pokemon too much water incident. For those that don’t know back in 2014 IGN reviewed Pokemon Omega and Saphire a game in a region known for having lots of water and gave it a 7.8 with only 2 main downsides. Too many HMs and too much water.

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And since the internet gives approximately 0 fucks about anything this set off a sandstorm of memes making fun of IGN.

Now obviously that is a bit minor compared to more recent mistakes, such as having to fire a reviewer for plagiarism after he stole a Dead Cells review from a much smaller Youtuber. You can read on that at Forbes.

And according to many sources, including oneangrygamer they used the default controls for Ace Combat 7 which give the game a more arcade feel, then complained about the game having an arcade feel to it. It, however, doesn’t end there. They also apparently only played half of Resident Evil 2 Remaster before releasing their original review. They later retracted large amounts of it and bumped up the score tho not by much. Check out more on that over at mainmenu.

Those are just some of the more popular or recent examples of issues over at IGN, and honestly, my title says “Mistakes” because I don’t believe these count as mistakes. A mistake implies you made a conscience misguided decision or didn’t know you were wrong and that doesn’t seem to be the case. Anyone that has ever written a paper in school knows plagiarism is wrong, and having played the original release of Resident Evil 2 they are quite clear about how to start a new game as a different character and even if they weren’t you are a professional reviewer, you have been around games enough you should know what you are doing.

I also can’t in good conscience give a pass on the  Ace Combat 7 incident because any reviewer should be playing games on multiple difficulties at the very least to see how they control. Now for smaller places mine or many of the others on WordPress that are run by one or 2 people chances are there is nobody to check over your work, but IGN has no excuse why two people aren’t playing each game, at least partly for a second person to make sure they aren’t totally dropping the ball.

The sad part of all this is, and I believe Dreamcast guy over on Twitter and many others have said this already, this is happening because they are in a rush to get content out and get their views and clicks and don’t actually care if the content is good, and that will eventually be the downfall of IGN. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Happenings In February

Hey guys, I just wanted to give you guys a heads up on some of the stuff I will be doing this upcoming month. First and foremost I will be doing 2 events with https://geek-gizmos.com/ that is owned by a good friend and old boss of mine from my Gamestop days a long time ago. First, we will be at Winter Play in New York City on February 2nd. It an event sponsored by Microsoft and will have over 100 game developers so if you are there feel free to shoot me a message over on Twitter and maybe we can meet up and check out some games together.

After that, on February 16th and 17th we will be at Clarks Summit Festival Of Ice where you can hang out with us or go see the sights or meet former WWF star Tony Atlas or New York Ranger Chris Kotsopoulos. We will have a booth set up where you can come to see what we have going on, buy some stuff or in general just say hello. There may be more stuff added but if you are near either of those events swing by, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Demon Souls Remaster Up To Sony Says Miyazaki

Many people have been curious over the years and especially this year being the Demon Souls 10 year anniversary, are we looking at a remaster of the game that first introduced us to the way Miyazaki designed games that later would become Dark Souls and Bloodborne.  In recent interviews, however, Miyazaki has revealed that even if he wanted to, which the idea makes him nervous, it would, in the end, be up to Sony, not From Software since Sony holds the IP.

If it happens or not, I don’t know but it wouldn’t be the most surprising thing ever. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Cultist Simulator

Cultist Simulator is a rather interesting game. In fact, it is actually a rather interesting review to try to write since to tell you how to play the game in itself would actually mess up a huge part of the game. The game is a card game, you use the card to make choices. Each card is used to do a different thing such as go to work or study. You will need to manage your money, health, and even your mental health, or your dread. Yes, you can go insane and die. You can die in a whole host of ways actually, then pick up as a new character. Once I died and restarted as a detective that had a file on my last character.

This all seems pretty vague, and the reason it sounds vague is telling you too much would actually ruin the game. The idea of the game is mostly figuring out how and what to do and what happens when you do it. I have included a video so you can see it in action, but I suggest just trying it for yourself. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Meeple Station (PC)

Meeple Station developed by Vox games and punished by Modularity can be purchased on Steam. The premise is quite simple, build a space station, mine resources, trade with other ships, increase the size of your station and crew, repeat. It sounds easy, but it does take quite a bit of effort and time to learn. You will also be fending off space pirates and, well squids. They will both honestly screw your day up. Honestly, there isn’t much to the game, yet.

Some of the future promised content however is quite impressive if true. They are talking about a co-op mode that would be amazing for this type of game as its rarely done and even rarer is that it is done well. There is also talk that they will be implementing a way to build your own trade ships. The game is in early access and they claim it is only about 20% done which if true means there is a ton more stuff coming in. definitely, do not count this as a complete review but as more of a preview combined with a review as I will be revisiting this time in the future. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Elite Dangerous Distant Worlds Omega Station

Distant Worlds is sort of on a break for some good old fashioned community goals. One is to gather the stuff for building a station new the center of the galaxy, the other is simply killing some stuff. I actually got here pretty fast, to be honest, did a little mining and decided I don’t like it and went exploring.

We won’t be leaving for the next leg of the journey until these are done since building the next station is part of the journey. The area is rather nice tho sitting near a nebula there is plenty to see. The real interesting thing tho is all the people. Every time I sign in there are new people to talk to, many still discussing The View where many have already lost ships to the extra gravity. The people on this journey are equal parts helpful and at times lonely. Numerous times people have been looking for wings, just to hear someone else’s voice. The whole thing is rather interesting to follow, and I will keep you all updated once the journey continues. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition (PS4)

As always with these things, I like to be upfront and say a huge thank you to the people over at Bandai Namco for the review copy of this fine game. It is always a huge honor to be chosen, and this one meant a lot more than normal to me since I loved this game on the Xbox 360 and I was dying to see how the Definitive Edition was.

The story is pretty much standard JRP fanfare, you start playing as Yuri, right after the town water system controlled by a blastia goes haywire. Blastia controls certain objects of the world and help humanity in various ways. This will lead you to chase down a thief and into the castle. You will meet a woman, Estelle. She will want your help escaping the castle and warning a knight and your childhood friend, Flynn, that he is in danger.

The story goes off from here and eventually leads in a different direction but admittedly I do not want to spoil what is, in my opinion, one of the best stories of its original release era. It stands up pretty solid in 2019 as well to be honest.

As a remaster the game looks and sounds great, but it does have a couple issues. For starters, Yuri is voiced by two different people. Neither voice actor is bad but is extremely distracting and even odd to suddenly be listening to Yuri with a different voice than have it pop back. Also, there was this.

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As you can see both voice bubbles are coming from Yuri, tho one of them is Karol speaking. Again, this isn’t a major mistake but it was a bit odd to see and seemed a bit careless to have not fixed. Another issue is the DLC you can get with it essentially breaks the game. It gives you access to high-level gear and items from the very beginning and gives you about 40 levels for all your characters allowing you to just walk through the game. So unless you are having a really hard time or just want to see the story I really encourage you not to use it.

None of that, however, is a deal breaker. The voice thing is annoying but tolerable and without the items, the combat is challenging and rewarding when it needs to be but fair. The artes system functions well and each new move feels like its own reward. All in all, I agree with the other reviews I have seen. This game is a solid title worth your purchase, which I will post amazon links for at the bottom. 8/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

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Along Came The Devil (2018)

Along Came The Devil out in 2018 and was met with less than stellar reviews. For example, Horror Freak News gave it a 1/5 and Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 43% and even IMDb gave it a 4.1/10. The surprising thing for me here is that it scored that high.

Don’t get me wrong, the acting and effects were good. The story, however, was terrible. A girl with an abusive dad eventually moves in with her aunt while her sister goes to college and starts seeing things. Her friend gave her idiotic advice to try to contact her dead mom and they summon, a demon.

Think that isn’t cliche enough? Her mom got pregnant while possed by a demon. Yup, this is a family trait. Her aunt, of course, hid this fact and the local priest also knew. He did the failed exorcism that killed her. He will attempt to do this exorcism, and it goes basically exactly like everyone in movie history. Kid swearing while tied to a bed looking creepy and talking about dead family members and such.

The one saving grace to all this is the ending. it isn’t what I expected which was nice to see. This doesn’t make up for the fact that the rest of the movie is simply a copy and paste of every other exorcist type movie ever made, except not as good. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.