Video Game Idea: Fallout 4.

Yep, you supposed I'd update on Tuesday or Thursday. Nope, tonight you're getting your content a mere few hours after the RPG update. Mainly because it kind of links in. You need to know all that stuff before I can lay down my ideas for Fallout 4.

Basically, I'm updating the currency.

This is the humble bottlecap. It's the currency in the Fallout universe and I want to shake things up a bit. Make them a little bit more Arr-Pee-Ghee-ish.

That's why I would like to put in Red Bottlecaps, Blue Bottlecaps, Green Bottlecaps and Black Bottlecaps.

Red Bottlecaps are the main currency, used to buy weapons, ammo, food, stimpaks and other miscellaneous items.

Blue Bottlecaps are uncommon and are used to unlock stat challenges. Now, your character has one hundred stat challenges that are randomly unlocked at the beginning of their playthrough. There's no indication of which ones they have until they've completed them. Upon completing them, the character gets a stat bonus. Here are some examples:

RADSISTENCE

"Kill 50/100/250/500 Feral Ghouls and gain 0.5/1/1.5/2% Radiation Resistance."

FORESIGHT

"Explore 10/25/50/100 locations and gain 1/2/3/4% Bonus Critical Hit Damage"

THE HARDY ENDURE

"Break 20/40/80 limbs and gain 3/6/9% Physical Damage Resistance"

FIREFIGHTER

"Get shot 1000/2000/4000/8000 times and gain 2/4/6/8% Weapon Damage Resistance"

Basically, your character throws five blue bottlecaps into a large hole/statwell/magical dumpster/whatever and they unlock a stage of a stat challenge. Note that I said stage. If there are five thousand stat challenges (Perfectly do-able, they could be anything from shooting two-headed cows with submachine guns or picking up washing-up powder.) then the player needs to have (4,900 x 4 x 5) 98,000 of these blue bottlecaps to unlock. Well, that's if there weren't infinite stages. Can you see the pattern in the above stat challenges? Yeah, they could just continue that way forever. I think that would be neat.

Onto Green Bottlecaps.

Green Bottlecaps are rare and allow you to purchase weapon mods with a fun little system included. All weapon mods are free, but useless. You have to choose HOW MANY Green Bottlecaps you wish to spend on the mod which will determine its power. Lets say you get three Green Bottlecaps in each segment of the game/30 minute dungeon battle or whatever. If you saved up a hundred and sank them all into a sniper rifle scope, then you could snipe an enemy two hundred miles away. They'd despawn before you could collect the loot but, you know, RPG. Do what you want. Freedom. You could sink them all into a submachine gun extended magazine and have a horrifyingly overpowered gun that almost never needs reloading. Or put them all into a flashlight/laser scope that becomes so powerful that it melts faces. Oh and you can now mod clothes. Want to run around in pajamas? Great, sink all those green caps into damage resistance and it'll just be as good as armour. Who cares if it doesn't make sense? RPG! Freedom!

And Black Bottlecaps.

Black Bottlecaps are VERY rare and can offer any of the following.

- A free random perk (Which you usually get by spending your talent points you get from levelling up.)

-Pointless but rare and often hilarious pieces of clothing like a Mankini or a Viking Helmet with a base stat bonus that can also be modified.

- A huge bonus to a random skill.

- Keys to access several hidden parts of the map (SUPER rare.)

-Exclusive weapons.

Also, you can exchange Red Bottlecaps/Blue Bottlecaps/Green Bottlecaps at Merchants. They won't always be the same and will vary according to time and settlement so it's a good idea to check multiple settlements to try and get the best bargains or you could try and beat the market by buying low and trading high. However, you cannot barter your way to more Black Bottlecaps. If you find a SINGLE one, every single NPC is instantaneously hostile towards you and if they manage to kill you, you will respawn without the Black Bottlecap. You must find the randomly allocated place to exchange the Black Bottlecap which will change with every game. Pretty neat. Oh and I also had a great idea for different modes after you complete the game/main storyline.

Options to change the enemy level difficulty from scaling to area based. 

If you encounter an enemy, it is automatically scaled to a level close to yours in Fallout. Some players prefer areas with loads of difficult enemies and areas with not so many difficult enemies. I enjoy games which do that because once I get my ass kicked by the difficult enemies, I can go back to earlier spots to completely steamroll enemies and take my anger out. Always fun. For serious.

The game should also have more recipes. Everyone liked the Deathclaw Hand, Nuka-Grenades and Rock-It Launchers. Why not do some schematics for clothing? And traps you can set for enemies? Why not make all of the useless environmental clutter like irons/tea trays/empty cans/bottles useful? Hell, why not make the game so that EVERY object has a use?

I'd also like to introduce Locked Junkboxes. Locked Junkboxes are scattered all over the place and are replenished every week. (Real time, not game time, reset your console's clock and the game will notice and say bad things about your mom or something.) 

You can buy keys for a hundred caps that will open the junkboxes that might contain packets of drain cleaner and a mop or a useful gun/piece of clothing. (Previous Fallout games have had hundreds of thousands of junk items. There's never exactly a shortage of mundane items.) 

Oh and the option to move bottlecaps around characters would be great too. If I complete the game, I'd like the option to transfer my money over and start again.

Finally, make player housing have some sort of impact. I want to be able to make strange labs/research stations/crazy and usable bits of furniture/arenas for captured bandits.

This. This would be my ideal Fallout 4.

Video Game Discussion: The Ideal RPG.

So with Fallout 4 on the horizon (C'mon, a website and Bethesda's Twitter officially mentioning a surprise in two days.) I'd like to talk to you about ar-pee-jhees. Now the RPG is a very shy and often misunderstood genre of videogame. Next to the standard FPS and Action-Adventure, the RPG sits at the bottom of the stairwell next to RTS games that are literally hanging on to the corroding staircase by their fingertips and screaming.

90% of the people reading this do not know what RTS stands for. That is a statistical fact.

So the RPG can be defined by three single points.

Point One: Emphasis on Character Customization. (Aesthetic or otherwise.)
Point Two: Strong Exploration/Story Building/Non-Linear path progression.
Point Three: Experience Points/Levels/Abilities.

This is barebones. If you have those in a game, your game is a sandbox game.
But let's take it a step forward for the clandestine among my readers. Here are three MORE points that will help distinguish an even more devout RPG game.

Point Four: Character Customization that affects abilities/combat skills.
Point Five: Unlimited exploration through the use of random/procedural generation.
Point Six: Levels outside of Levels/Player experience/Custom abilities.

This is an RPG.

At its heart, RPG's offer freedom. Point four is a continuation of point one. Point five is a continuation of point two and point six is a continuation of point three.

Above is the classic RPG, Dwarf Fortress. Or to give it its full name: 

Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress

Not the best name anyone's ever come up with.

If you look at this image and go "That's not an RPG! That's a bunch of pixels! Skyrim is an RPG! RPG's are new things that have only been around since 2011! Charlie has no idea what he's talking about!" then please click the little white "x" in the top corner of your screen.  I do not need such tainted site traffic such as yourself.

Dwarf Fortress has

-Permadeath.

-Procedurally generated universes, text and characters.

Now let's talk about subsections of RPG's.

Roguelikes: Roguelikes are tricksy mistresses. They offer procedural or random levels and often if you die then you have to start the entire game all over again. It's massive in Japan and remains in relative obscurity in every other market. Well, sort of. You may not know it, but you see hallmarks of roguelikes everywhere. For example:

Borderlands and Borderlands 2. Which I think, before you get incredibly angry at me, is more of an RPG than Skyrim.

Borderlands has:

-Exploration

- Levels/Abilties/Levels outside of Levels

I should explain Levels outside of Levels. In Borderlands 2 there's something called a "Badass Rank" and you get Badass Points if you do certain things like "Kill 100 Bandits" or "Open 1000 boxes" or "Look through 10 telescopes" and the list is endless. When you get a certain amount of points, you get a token that you can use to upgrade your stats by a small amount. Because the number of points you need to get a token increases and the skill increase becomes smaller as you continue to play, you have a "Levels outside of levels system." which is just a regular leveling system. But upgraded so it's technically unlimited.

Now I may as well talk about "Player Experience" whilst I'm here.

Player experience is something different to experience points (Exp/Levelling/Upgrades) which set it apart.

In Borderlands 2, Corrosive weapons melt armoured enemies and machines, electric weapons bring down enemies or machines with shields and fire weapons bring down enemies with health. The game has pre-requisites and YOU, the player, have to learn them. 

If you think you've never played anything like this before, then think about Pokemon. Grass, Fire, Water? Same thing. Same ballgame. Randomised wild Pokemon encounters too. You can nickname Pokemon and are encouraged to play with them in some form. Pokemon is technically an RPG.

So that's Roguelikes. 

Next we have MMORPG's or MUD which we won;t waste time on. Christ, I spent half my teenage life on Warcraft. Tactical Role-Playing games or RTS's (Real-Time Strategy) Games which include Civilisation, The Sims, Simcity and perhaps League Of Legends/DOTA 2

Action/Shooter RPG's which include Zelda, Final Fantasy, Diablo and all point and clicks and games like Half-Minute Hero.

The difference is that these RPG's are prone to include:

Choices and Consequences: Fable and Elder Scrolls.

RTS Elements. Sometimes the two go hand in hand.

A story involving mythos, end-of-the-world, save the princess etc.

I've just realised that Super Mario is umbrella'ed under RPG. What is life.

So those are all types of different RPG's.

The most RPGest RPG will have the following six points. If it has the next three, it is the god of the RPG's.

Point Seven: TOTAL character customisation.

Point Eight: ENDLESS exploration.

Point Nine: UNLIMITED player development.

So the final RPG will just kind of be a reflection of life. It must have total character customisation that has no definitive character end, endless exploration using more than procedural/random scripts and somehow add in extra landmass and new art assets on request and unlimited levelling, which I suppose Borderlands 2 has achieved.

In reality, the perfect RPG is a goal that will never be met. It is a goal that is being stretched towards, however. And the most stretchiest are the closest to calling themselves RPG's.

Tune in next time when I'll be showcasing my Fallout 4 ideas!

Video Game News: Xbox None

So I've found this wonderful piece of news about the Xbox One that I wish to share with you all today whilst extending a welcome to whomever is reading this blog from Indonesia.

So, the Xbox One has been released and everything's going peachy (Apart from all the chewed up discs, but that's for another day.) but the console does not function.

No, it does not function. Straight out of the box, it does not function.

Once you connect to the internet and apply a patch, you can play. If you do not have an internet connection....

There it is. This is what you've spent £429 on. A big, colonial, brick. It may have fancy logos but that's what you've purchased. A brick.

The Xbox One cannot play games unless you apply the hotfix via USB or internet connection.

No other product in the history of time has done that.

No iPad, No iPod, No Laptop, No TV, No Nintendo product, No Sony product.

Nothing. Ever. At all.

And I don't care about the people who'll go "Oh, just update it at a friend's house." or "Well this is the 21st century, you should have a reliable internet connection despite statistics showing that it's hard to maintain one." because that just isn't the point, is it? The console does not work as a standalone product. 

Bottom. Line.

That is a 100% indisputable failure rate.

Forget the marginal 0.4% of PS4's that don't work. I mean, who cares about 1/1000? 

Not a single Xbox One works. Not a single Xbox One has been sold legitimately without fields of lies and marketing. Not a single Xbox One will be bought by people who are sane and rational humans.

Video Game Review: Sleeping Dogs

Okay, let's discuss Square Enix's open-world action-adventure game called Sleeping Dogs released in August 2012.

It's very much GTA: Hong Kong, only with emphasis on fighting mechanics. In the first tutorial, you are shown how to counter enemies when they wind up a punch and flash red, how to grapple enemies and throw them into dumpsters, turbines and, on occasion, the ocean. It also has combos for when you mash the attack button and heavy attacks for after you've finished mashing and hold the button down.
In terms of combat, this game gives you a choice of three different food platters and then leaves the room. You're encouraged to mix and match to get more exp, but you're generally left to find out what works for you.
I like that.
Most games will offer you a choice and then hover around the table and it decides to either move some of the plates away, to force you to try out new things, or just beats you around the head if you so much as look at something other than what you're offered.

You will not find better combat in an open world sandbox game. You will not. You have already failed.

Another thing it does well. COLLECTIBLES.

Get all the 11 Jade Statues and increase your melee! Health shrines! For every five you find, you get a health boost! Hack all the cameras! Find all the lock boxes which contain money and items! Beat all the fight clubs/martial arts classes! It's collectible heaven. Seriously. I got this game when it came out and I still haven't found everything. There is no such thing as too many collectibles. In any game. The more there is, the better.

Now enough about that, let's get playing!

Tonight's playthrough is sponsored by Smarties Mix. 

Not even a Smarties bag. Just a full on industrial-size "this-was-meant-for-the-mcdonalds-milkshake-machine-and-not-your-face" Smarties bag. You can tell by the way it has almost no branding.

Because fuck it, if my coronary bursts in my mid-thirties, you may as well all be here to read, support and encourage. I expect nothing less of my dear, dear, readers. I'm shortening my life expectancy by the mouthful, but hey, this is the way gamers are supposed to eat. Like a fucking hamster on methadrone.

So you play as Wei Chen, an undercover police agent (Don't worry, that's totally not a spoiler. It's revealed after literally five minutes of gameplay.) as he tries to infiltrate the notorious Sun On Yee, which is responsible for more organised crime that the sunburn you'd expect it to be causing. It's like the super-Triads, I guess.

Like Super-Aids is to Aids.

I don't particularly know why Wei Chen can mingle with the triads when he seems to have it all upstairs but no member of the triads does. And why does he help them out by murdering other triads? That's not being undercover, that's being a triad and being paid by the police. 

Actually, no, that makes perfect sense. Chen has the best job in the world.

He's also got to deal with his past all coming back, after one of the triads killed his sister, Mimi, by introducing her to illegal substances and stuff. And then the police are all "Aw, be more sneeeeeaky Wei." whenever the police haul his ass in after he's arrested whilst punching up a Yakuza chain gang.

Vehicles are fun too. You can throw your vehicle into chase cars at the touch of a button, perform action highjacks and jump from one car to the other and when you're on your phone and enter a car, you DON'T HAVE TO HANG UP THE PHONE, GODDAMN IT GTA IV, I'M TALKING TO YOU.

Other touches are nice too. Certain clothes give bonuses to mission cash, melee bonuses, gun bonuses and enemies might try and run away if they're the last two standing after a shoot out. Tracking them down and finishing them off is always a joy. A dark, primal, joy which lurks in some farspace in the back of my head.

You can pick up a used copy for £7.99, which makes it a good buy if you still can't afford the fifty quid GTA V which will never go down in price from now until the very end of time, when all consoles cease to exist.

I should mention though, it doesn't have flyable heli's or planes.

Oh well, maybe you'll like the game on the next review, eh?

Video Game Review: GTA: Online Beach Bum Pack

So yeah, Rockstar are giving out freebies left, right and center.

Have a free car in the tutorial mission of multiplayer! Have $500,000, Have a free update pack!

It's almost as if they're going to start charging us incredibly soon and are bracing themselves for it by offering up free things!
No, really, that's totally why this is happening. Nobody gives out nice things just to be nice.

So the update has new cars, boats and camper vans including the BF Bifta Dune Buggy and Bravado Paradise camper.

Combed the beach. Couldn't find any. Despite the fact that everyone else had hundreds.

Two new weapons! The SNS pistol, which is clearly a little bit pre-meditatively implimented because I have all tints already unlocked for some reason, and the broken bottle. Neither of which I can equip. There's seemingly no way to equip items. Clearly I'm doing something wrong. Maybe the game recognizes that I have a better pistol and so will only let me equip that? Who knows.

There's also new shirts and shorts! They're hideous! Yay!

Even Michael doesn't like it, and Michael dresses horribly anyway.

One thing I did notice is when I went to the gun store to get my free gun, I got thirty free bullets along with it, which somehow ended up in my combat pistol w/ suppressor/ext. mag and flashlight.

I then swerved round the corner, shot a person through his windshield with a couple o' slugs and collected a cool $3000. Then I robbed some stores, stumbled upon a $5000 car for Simeon and pretty much cashed out.

So I bought some new threads and a secondary car. Just an Albany. I can't bring my sports car anywhere. Too many players with gasoline cans and sticky bombs and whilst I get a replacement if it 'splodes, I can't afford it.

Time to suit up.

And car up.

Then I went to the pier to look for some more buggies only to have a group of buggies run me over repeatedly on the white hot sands. Aren't people lovely? That was a rhetorical question, obviously. 

So I just took my anger out on a nearby bench by punching it. Just a little.

Maybe just a little more than a little.

That's all for today!

Also, I'm stopping the GTA:O stories for a while, so we can concentrate on some game reviews. Starting tomorrow. Also, nice to see the blog stats going interesting again. "sveiki" to our reader from Latvia this week. Additionally, what would you guys like to see me do a review on? Be sure to comment below. If you can. I'm not sure if that section even works, to be honest. If not, I'll just choose something myself then. Ciao!

Video Game News: Don't Believe Everything You Read. Especially This.

So the PS4 had a pretty successful launch, with over one million units sold in North America alone on the first day.

Times it by two or three and that's how many are going to go out in Japan or Europe in the following two weeks.

Even Microsoft gave Sony a stiff nod with their message, congratulating them.

Here's the image, doctored by 4Chan to make fun of the red line of death and the fact that the console wobbles slightly.

Goofballs, all of you.

And there have been generally favourable reviews outside of Amazon.com.

Over 1,000 5 * reviews on Amazon.

But then you notice 550 1 * reviews.

I've been skimming through the reviews and they all seem to more-or-less say that the console was DOA and wouldn't function at all when plugged in.

Are all these reviews legitimate? Probably not. There are going to be a couple of people simply decrying Sony. Are they all fake? Well judging by the 340 people that have backed the most unfavourable review of the console on the site, it would seem escapist to do so. There's clearly something there.

Generally, there is an estimated 0.4% of consoles that will brick up. I think of it as 0.5% because it's easier to mention in conversation that one in every one thousand PS4's won't work because it makes me sound less like someone who wears taped-up glasses, lives with his mother, hates everything, spends all day discussing console specs and has chronic asthma.

Obviously I do not want to sound like that.

I do not have asthma and my vision is perfect.

So there's this 0.4% figure being thrown around but yet around 40% of people are reporting broken consoles on Amazon. Doesn't really add up, does it?

I don't know what to believe. There's literally no way to discern what the truth is, given the fact that you do not need to have a Playstation 4 in order to make a review of the machine on Amazon.com.

There are other interesting pieces of information, such as the failure of both Kotaku and IGN's Playstation Quatro's. (However, they did have more than one and some worked fine.)

All in all though, there's no way to tell whether there are serious design faults until it launches worldwide late in the month.

Until then, just avoid the debate. Because all the information is conflicted. Best not to get involved until the dust settles down and we can see the machine in action, hear about returns that have happened locally and problems friends are having.

Then get the console when it seems the sensible option to you, hopefully at a cheaper price with a larger launch library.

Video Game Idea: Mr Clicker

First up, thanks for over 750 views. Thank you to someone in South Korea tuning in this week. Thank you to the people who are somehow reading this on BlackBerry's. Blog data is fantastic.

Anyway, here's an idea I had.

It's a button. Just a button that comes in a little coloured plastic bag or blister pack. Whatever looks nicer.

Okay, so it's an almost entirely online product. A merchandised e-game, if you will.

You may not have heard of Cookie Clicker, but if you have, you may know where I'm going with this.

Basically it's called Mr Clicker and it's a button. Just a button.

That's all it is. In pretty tortoiseshell packaging Once you buy the button, you get a code with the pack which allows you to make an account on www.mrclicker.com or whatever URL is available.

You then create an avatar that looks like yourself

Obviously I'm using an Xbox Live one as an example.

Then you enter the game. In the game, your character will walk up to an on-screen button and stand there.

When you press your button, the character on screen presses the button and you get a token.

Once you get five tokens, you will be able to "buy" the ability to make the virtual you click the button independent of whether you actually click the button or not.

It will continue to rack up if you are not on the site. Pushing the button, however, will cause your score to rack up faster.

So kids will be taking it everywhere. And they'll look totally friggin' odd. Just standing there and compulsively pushing a button. It might look sad, but I bet you it'll create shock advertising.

But here's where it gets evil. (Because I work in retail and like to think of marketing ploys daily.)

There are prizes for the top scorers of every month as well as the highest scoring weekly.

In addition to this, kids can spend button tokens on customizing their own avatar, changing the virtual background behind the virtual button and other options. For example, you can save up a thousand clicks and "buy" a virtual helper who walks on to the screen and starts pressing your button, bringing your clicks per second from a measly one to a godly two. Soon, kids will be comparing CpS in the playground (Clicks per second.) "Ha! I have +5 and you only have +3!"  And my god, kids are competitive.

Maybe if you save up two thousand you can get a helper who does it even faster and is a different colour. And if you save up three thousand you can get one who does it EVEN FASTER and is another different colour.

More customization options would roll out every couple of days, naturally. "Limited edition item! Only 500 clicks for this purple trilby! Gone tomorrow! Show off to your friends!"

It'd be truly interesting to see if kids buy items that help them click faster or spend tokens on items that accessorize a pointless avatar.

1st wave would be the buttons. They're all red, cheap as can be, in varying shapes. Kids are encouraged to collect them all.

2nd wave would be blue ones of varying shapes. Of course, every click on a green one is worth two clicks. Got a red one from the previous series? Great! You can connect it and get 3 TOKENS PER CLICK.

Connect it with your friends and get even MORE tokens!

Just imagine the kids, all connecting their buttons in long rows and clicking like mad. What a sight. 

Again, shock advertising.

3rd wave is green buttons. You can see where this is going. Three tokens per click. Connect them to a blue AND a red one to start a combo chain! 9 tokens per click! That way, people will continue to buy older sets. Which won't need to go down in price, importantly.

Oh and the blue one is double the price of the red and the green is triple the price of the red. Despite the fact that they cost the same to produce. And you know they'll sell. Once they're ingrained in the market, they call the shots.

4th wave is purple buttons which work slightly differently and can be pressed once a day to get a cosmetic bonus for your avatar as well as foil packs of cards with codes on them. Each code would unlock backgrounds and accessories which veteran kids could spend extra click tokens on if they're getting bored and can't find anything to use their clicks on.

Finally, kids are encouraged to share pictures of their avatar on Facebook and Twitter. You get an extra fifty tokens for doing it on Facebook and an extra twenty for doing it on Twitter. Free marketing at no cost and keeps the kids happy.

THIS IS THE BEST IDEA EVER AND WOULD BE THE BEST SELLING TOY OF ALL TIME. AND IT'S JUST A SMALL PLASTIC DISC THAT INHERENTLY DOES NOTHING.

Have you got any toy ideas? Share them with me in the comments below, or on my Facebook.

Have a good afternoon, everyone!

Video Game Muck-Around: I Got Mah House!

$400,000 dollar flat. Boom. $500,000 stimulus package. Thank you, god-tier Rockstar.

Here it is from the outside. Comes with a ten car garage.

On we go. Let's have a look inside and see what's cracking. It's a pretty fun thing, walking into a new home.

Now this is what I'm talking about. Look at that slick modern art. I put it there specially and it definitely wasn't pre-made and came packaged with the apartment.

Complimentary wine that you can actually drink and swill around in the glass! Well actually, my character looks like a bit of a condescending asshole when he does that. Oh well.

Room with a view! And it's also on TV. What a coincidence. It's also got a telescope you can look out of and see people kicking the shit out of each other. It's more appealing than you'd think. Honest.

Here's where I keep my things. Lots of modern art pieces that you can't possibly hope to understand.

Yes, that is the Vinewood sign to the left in the far distance.

Oh fuck yes. This is more like it.

Guys, I'm worried. *hic* There's some sort of pixie, they've set my wood beams on fire and have created a forcefield so I can't put it out *hic* someone help me.

So I got drunk and passed out. I've just woken up, drank a glass of green shit on the counter that happened to be sitting next to either the most plastic-looking fruit I have ever seen or decorative anal beads.

Oh shit, Inspector Gadget USA edition is on. 

So then I sit down, pan through the channels and my security cameras. And then find the real-time cams of every player. Like, the third person perspective of everyone in my current game session.

Naturally, I call up Lester to put a $10,000 bounty on the highest level player I can find and then watch him whilst relaxing on my real-life sofa with a real-life packet of Hula Hoops cackling like a maniac whilst game chat fills with "FUCK YOU." "CHITTY, WHAT KINDA NAME CHITTY?" "YOU SUCK."

And they get shot to pieces within a minute.

It's the best thing I have ever done and I regret nothing whatsoever. NEXT ROOM.

Aw sweet. Two guitars and some Skateboardy stuff. I also have a computer in this room to order stuff. Ok.

Then I go back upstairs. It's good but I wish I could... Oh snap.

Soulwax FM. Blasting through the house. All day and all night. Smooth funk, all the time. 

I wonder if there's anything else I can interact with?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIIpExVf-5I&list=PLD988FF67001AC590&index=2

Ooh, a bedroom.

I can sleep on it.

Ok, done, next room.

Wait a second, what the hell are these? Oh jeez, virtual Charlie has horrifying taste.

Are these apartments instanced? Do different players get different statues or what? Is there a randomiser which sets different things on each apartment?

Walk-in Wardrobe room. Oh yeah. Easier to access that a locker or cupboard the size of a thimble.

Better change into my jacket. This suit is kinda sucky.

This is the bathroom. It's got a shower which lets me clean the blood off of my character. However, I am not covered in blood so my shower won't work. I did not know that this is how showers operated.

My shower in real-life just needs the faucet turned and the heater switched on.

I do not need to make sacrifices to some sort of unseen blood god in order to bathe.

It's getting dark. Best check out the garage.

Clearly the set of that scene in Batman with Morgan Freeman and Christian Bale. You know the one.

How much do I have left? About $100,000. Enough for one of THESE BAD BOYS.

The Pfister Comet. In delicious Apple Red. A pretty fast sports car. Second best handling. Good speed.

Let's have a close up.

Already insured and had a tracker, so I spent a thousand bucks modifying the windows to look darker.

You'd be surprised by the amount of players who headshot drivers.

Oh my god. Everything is fantastic.

Video Game Muck-Around: A Couple Of Photos.

Tree's n' rain.

That is literally all I wanted to share. I came across this little area and it looked kind of sad. There were loads of surfboards, but the whole place was empty, with nobody for miles.

Video Game News: Nobody Knows What's Happening, Nobody Has Basic Reading Comprehension Anyway.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24834842

So according to the BBC, CoD: Ghosts suffers from dips in frame-rate. That's the title.

The subheading is "Reviews of the latest Call of Duty video game have reported problems with the graphics on the PlayStation 4 edition of the title."


Two different problems. But there's no distinction. Framerate drops happen when there's a bit too much going on on your screen. Michael-Bayish explosions, enemy swarms, grenade blasts, whatever.

Because it's a lot for the machine to process at one time, the game may lag a bit. When this happens, you'll get a kind of visual stutter

Then the article mentions the resolution difference between the PS4, Wii U and Xbox One.

These are three different things, in three different paragraphs. They're related, but distinctly different.

But it's ok everyone, Mark Rubin says that it's of the utmost importance that CoD runs at 60 frames instead of 30.

Uh....

Um....

No.

Nope.

Fucking NO.

The difference between 15fps and 30fps is massive.

The difference between 30fps and 60fps is negligible, if it exists at all.

It's just like the rules of polygons. After a while, you're getting diminished returns.

Here's an image to help. Along with a graphical comparison.

Imagine Rubin is saying that they want CoD to have 60,000 triangles instead of 6,000 triangles. 

It sounds good on paper. It sounds promising. But yet the textures look like burn ward regulars.

So there's no substance behind what you're saying.

Your game is running at 30fps with severe drops.

You just heard everyone talking about 60fps and hoped that if you said that, people would believe that the game is better despite the fact that it's stuttering.

That's like me saying I'm the healthiest I've been in years whilst sawing my own legs off.

You can embargo the reviews all you want. And it's definitely useful that you've made things so convoluted that you can hide behind false claims.

But the truth'll come out.

Do Not Try To Console Me, Gaming Industry.

So I don't know if you've been paying attention in the last week, but Sony finally did an ultra-mega Q and A about the PS4.

Here it is. It's not going to be the greatest novel of our time but it sure does shed some light on a few things that people have been needlessly arguing over specs and other trivialities.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2013/10/30/ps4-the-ultimate-faq-north-america/#sect1

So you can pick up your good old Pee-Es Quatro in late November or next week if you're a Yankee-doodle.

I bet you can't wait to get it home and load it up. The menu looks great, it really does! Let's see if I can put a theme on it to make it look cooler.

"Sorry buddy, no dynamic themes on the PS4." - Sony

Well that's ok. I don't mind. Hey, my friends are coming over! I'll put on that new CD I just got! I'm so glad I can rely on the PS4 since my laptop crashes constantly and my MP3 player is somewhere in the bedroom but I can't be bothered to find it.

"Bad luck pal, audio CD's won't work on the PS4. So you can't burn the discs onto the machine and listen to them whilst you play."

Sounds a bit strange. Oh well, I'm sure I can have fun online.

"Paid online." - Sony.

Well, you've got servers to run. I can't expect you to be a charity can I? Hey, why won't Elder Scrolls Online work?

"Paid subscription." - Sony.

I don't get why I have to pay three times in order to play a game but I guess I can enjoy talking to my friends whilst p-

"No headset currently available at launch apart from the one you get in the box which is traditionally awful." - Sony.

"I might pick up WatchDogs or DriveClub tom-"

"Delayed until mid-2014." - Sony.

Any other games I can pick up at launch?

"Two triple A games which you got with the packaged set, several indie titles that have been available for a while and a couple of games for the PS3 and 360." - Sony

Well, these graphics look great. I can really tell that's it's ten times more powerful that a PS3. Hey, why aren't my PS3 games working?

"The PS4 is not backwards compatible with PS3, PS2 or PSOne games." - Sony.

You said it was at E3.

"We meant that you can pay to have your games transferred over from the PS3." - Sony.

Oh. You didn't make that clear. At all. Then why won't the discs work?

"It's too complicated. You can't possibly understand it. It's all... er....to do with the system architecture.Yes that's it." - Sony.

They're both Blu-Ray discs that can burn information onto the console, I don't understand.

"Look, it's hard for us as well. It's not as if we're trying to shill you for more money." - Sony.

How much will it cost?

"10 dollars and only works with some of the games." - Sony.

I just paid sixty bucks for Ghosts/BF4/Ass Creed: Black Flag. I don't get why I have to pay you ten dollars.

"All of the money goes into making innovative games that you couldn't get on the PS4." - Sony.

I'm pretty sure I could play Flower on a PS3.

"Are you a game developer?" - Sony.

No. Sorry.

"It's ok. I'll forgive you this time. I'm very forgiving, you know." - Sony.

I don't understand why you have to make me feel bad though. Why can't you explain everything simply? If I'm getting confused, how do you think lots of your other customers are going to feel? Do we just throw our hands up and proclaim that game design is witchcraft or some sort of strange alchemy that we're not allowed to understand.

"That. Exactly that. Do that right now." - Sony.

Oh.

"Hey, cheer up! You can play your used games! Isn't that great?!" - Sony.

That should probably be a right, not a privilege.

"You're an entitled gamer." - Satan's Only Nuisance Yes-Men.

Okay. I best shut up and play. This must be the way forward. I trust a corporation to know what's in my best interests. Hey, can I do that thing you demo-ed at E3 where I can switch between games?

"What do you think?" - Sony.

I can't can I?

"We're sorry to say that this feature is currently unavailable at launch." - Sony.

The controller light bar is reflecting off the screen and it's distracting.

"You'd better believe that there's no way to turn that off." - Sony.

My PS4 won't stand vertically properly.

"Because you haven't bought our 15 - 30 dollar stands." - Sony.

My PS3 controller

"is now redundant and won't work with the PS4, yes." - Sony.

But why?

"Oh, did you make this console?" - Sony.

No, I didn't. I didn't make this console at all but guesswork shows that-

"You didn't make it. You keep quiet and you use it. And don't you dare try to change the way it works." - Sony.

I didn't want to until you started needlessly removing features.

"Have you been living under a rock since 2005? Who uses audio CD's?" - Sony.

My Blu-Ray remote isn't working.

"We're not letting it." - Sony.

I'm sure I don't need any of those things anyway. I'm not ancient. I'm cool and hip. I'll press the share button and it's.... it's doing nothing.

"Oh, that doesn't work at launch." - Sony.

The share button won't work at launch? But that was cited as a main feature. You have to-

"We don't have to do anything." - Sony.

I've got my musicunlimited subscription so I can listen to music whilst I play, even though I used to do that with burned and synced CD's anyway.

"Don't dwell on the past." - Sony.

Hey, can I still use that music visualiser with the massive HD planet earth and the fun mountain waves that moved in time with the music?

"Of course you can't. This is the PS4, not the PS3." - Sony.

Can I at least play MP3's? You said they were ok, right?

"Nope. Not allowed." - Sony

Ok. Fine. I'll play for a month. The share button will make this much more fun.

===============================================================

Hey, why isn't it working now?

"Oh, the devs don't like you recording that because it's a part of the game with spoilers." - Sony.

But I could record them with a camera phone, why aren't you letting me record them with this? How does this make any difference at all?

"Do you enjoy ruining other people's fun?" - Sony.

You're right. It's for the best. I'd best post this video on-

"No videos on YouTube right now. Only Facebook." - Sony.

I don't want to share them on Facebook.

"Ok, that's fine. You don't have to." - Sony.

Can I ask why?

"Are you a major games developer or well-known journalist?" - Sony.

No.

"No." - Sony.








I'm going to be straight with you in case you haven't got the point already. A console is not superior if it has fewer features than its predecessor. That's just the definition.

And the worst part is that we can't debate any additional feature that's been blocked, scuppered or adapted.
If you want to record all of the game, including parts of the endgame you're "spoiling it for everyone."
If you can't afford to buy an expensive console, an expensive game and pay two subscription fees you're "poor" and should "get a job."
If you want to play audio cd's you're "hipster", "old fashioned" or "backward."


I'm not saying that the PS4 should play CD's you crazy fanboy mongoloids.
I'm asking why it can't.

Why CAN'T I play audio cd's?
Why have you NOT included dynamic themes?
Why am I DISALLOWED when it comes to PS3 peripherals?

All I need to hear is:

"We're saving space. It sucks I know, but we had to make the decision."
"Dynamic themes weren't used as much as we'd hoped. We cut it out to save money."
"I'm not going to lie, we wanted you to buy another controller along with the machine."
"We can't get PS3 discs to work. Let me open up the box and show you exactly why you can run PS3 games from cloud storage but not from a disc."

And then I'd shut up. I'd take that answer and whilst I wouldn't be happy, I'd at least be satisfied that there was some justified reason behind the removal of a feature.

Should anyone in the world who asks the question of "Why" be met with derision and insults?


"It's 720p. Get over it."
"It's not backwards compatible. Stop thinking in the past."
"Of course you have to pay for online. Those dedicated servers aren't going to pay for themselves."

"Ok." leaves us with shitty launch titles, inferior hardware, firmware and software, poorly designed products built for the eyes to look at rather than play, badly optimized games and an uninformed gaming public who are blindly faithful to a brand in a way that would make the religious roll their eyes.

"Why." leaves us with maybe we could improve, let's give this a go, we haven't tried approaching it this way and well, progress.

Don't be mistaken, marketers will lie to you. They're trying to sell you a product, not invite you back to their pad for tequila and backrubs.

The Xbox One has been re-announced three times because marketers weren't how sure just how hard to push their console. And remember, it's absolute pants and has less processing power than the PS4 despite the fact it's a hundred dollars more. (That part is a fact, not up for dispute or bargaining.) Why the fuck would they be honest with you when the marketers are working with a goddamn lemon to begin with? It's not the fault of the designer or maker either. They were presumably told to cut corners up top and hope they wouldn't be noticed by the general public.

I've spent this entire blog slamming Sony's PS4 and I know that the Xbox One will look far worse when it eventually comes clean.

Stop being a sucker and ask some questions.

Otherwise the industry is on the way out.