The Error Report: Capcom shocked that game they are famous for does well

After a recent earnings report, Capcom CEO Kenzo Tsujimoto expressed bewilderment at the success of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard.

"I thought there wasn't a market for this anymore," Kenzo said. "Why would anyone want to buy a game from a franchise that has sold millions of copies in the past? Why would they still play a game that returns to what made it famous? I mean that was then; this is now. We can look at market trends, and the trends show that people want action, not horror. So you're telling me when we just let our developers make something they are passionate about and experienced in, it produces a good game? Preposterous; that hasn't been substantiated by the pile of spreadsheets and statistics I have sitting here. This must be an anomaly."

Mr. Tsujimoto had previously just returned from a visit to the Louvre museum in Paris where he had some controversial remarks about the famous Mona Lisa painting. "I can't believe the number of people coming here. Do people really still care about this stuff? Current market analysis shows that the population desires easily-discernible and distinctly feminine facial features. You can barely even tell she's a woman, and it's only thanks to the cleavage. At least da Vinci was able to understand the market that much."

"Thank God I convinced them to include the first person view," Kenzo concluded. "That's probably the only reason the game did any good. Maybe I'll try that with Mega Man next."

[DISCLAIMER: The Error Report is a fictional publication produced for fun and not a real news source.]

In Defense of the Other M

Hey guys, remember me?

Not content with only burning bridges with multiplayer gamers everywhere, I now set my sights on shredding my reputation with single player gamers as well. Let's get started, shall we?

It's one of the greatest and most critically acclaimed game series of all-time (that nobody plays because it's a more mature property owned by Nintendo). It established the strong female video game trope decades before third wave feminists started pretending that it doesn't exist. Its protagonist is so badass that she single-handedly thwarted a viral outbreak that wiped out an entire space station and she took on a space pirate army that culminated in the destruction of a whole planet. Yes, today we are talking about Metroid.

Metroid has undergone many evolutions throughout its existence, starting from its humble beginnings as an open world sidescroller that was too cheap to animate a crawling sprite, so they invented a random bullshit ability called the morph ball. And since then, our heroine Samus has acquired numerous new abilities and upgrades over the years, from grappling beams to obnoxiously huge shoulder pads. Not all of these changes have been welcomed by the fanbase however. When Metroid Prime launched as the first 3D Metroid game, it was met with heavy skepticism from the decision to switch to the first person camera angle. As fans had a chance to sit down and experience it though, most in the end came to accept this change, as the game managed to retain many of the elements that players have come to know and love from the series, such as its incredibly immersive sci-fi horror atmosphere and its labyrinthine open world level designs.

The most recent mainline Metroid release however has been met with massive scorn from the fanbase, and to this day, years later, it continues to be maligned as one of the worst Metroid games in the series. While some of the reasons for this are understandable to a degree, most of them I find to be hugely overblown, and as a result, I feel this has become an incredibly underrated Metroid title in an already incredibly underappreciated franchise. So today, I'm going to defend the allegedly indefensible, Metroid: Other M.

Without further ado, I have conveniently numbered key points which definitively prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Other M is 10/10 Adam Certified Approved Game.

1. Boobs

Boobs are a quintessential component to any successful game, especially when said game has no interesting ideas or quality gameplay to bring to the table. That's why Other M never misses another opportunity for Samus' suit to malfunction, even if it kinda makes no sense that solid metal material randomly disintegrates into pure energy stuff upon impact, or apparently when... Samus has a mood swing? I... I dunno how that--whatever. The point is boobs. This game has them. And Samus has a fairly respectable C cup if I may so. Speaking of cup sizes, want to know a fun fact? The reason why A cups are the smallest is because the more flat-chested you are, the higher value you're worth. It's true. Flat is justice. Don't try to argue it. I've done the research.

2. Lasers

It has frickin' lazer beams. Lots of them. And as Michael Bay has proven, if the boobs alone aren't an effective enough distraction, lots of lasers and explosions will be. No sharks yet though. I think they were saving those for the sequel.

X. ?????

What number was I on again? Let me get back to these after I ask my good friend Gaben.

If you were starting to think this is going to be a joke blog then SHAZAM, joke's on you, because no seriously, I really am going to defend this game. In order to make my case for Other M though, first we need to understand what is so hated about it so that we can begin to deconstruct it.

So what supposedly went so horribly wrong with Other M for it to be met with such contempt? Well it starts with Other M's opening cutscenes, revealing right off the bat that Samus' voice is as stiff as a federation soldier who just had his life force sucked out by a metroid. To make matters worse, she's mysteriously developed an odd obsession with a baby metroid despite that it's supposed to be the other way around. And she has a daddy complex with her former commander, Adam Malkovich. And she let's him order her around as his submissive subordinate. And she has a complete mental breakdown while encountering Ridley despite that by this point in the timeline she's already fought with him on at least four different occasions. OK... so there's more than just a few problems with the characterization here.

I'm not going to make any excuses or defenses for all this. After all, much of this does fly in the face of what we've come to assume about Samus as a character. Though it was never technically stated in previous entries, one could reasonably assume from her numerous encounters with giant horrific space bugs and her brief and scattered monologues that she was clearly a strong-willed and level-headed character that certainly wouldn't lose her cool at the first sign of stress. It's just bad writing, and there's only so much BS you can invent to plug the plot holes before you just can't ignore them anymore. Other M has many narrative problems, but there's also a major problem with using any of these criticisms as the central basis for your objection to it: nobody has ever played Metroid for the story in the first place.

Most Metroid games historically have contained almost no narrative whatsoever beyond very rudimentary conveyances through the visuals, as well as some scattered Samus monologues and space pirate data logs here and there. Moreover, video games in general are far more dependent on good gameplay to carry them than good stories. I would argue that a game can't survive with a good story but mediocre gameplay, yet it can survive a mediocre story with good gameplay, especially when we're talking about a series that has never traditionally focused on the storytelling to begin with. Yet despite these considerations, the vast bulk of fan critiques focus almost exclusively on this singular point, and in some instances even acknowledge that the gameplay isn't that bad, but still perplexingly conclude that Other M is a terrible game.

Some critics can't stop themselves from bashing the story even when they say they're going to talk about the gameplay. Instead, they unknowingly fall back on criticizing the story again without even realizing it. In a YouTube video entitled Does Metroid: Other M Still SUCK? by user TheGamingBritShow, the critic begins his commentary by noting that people have already thoroughly dissected Other M's narrative, so instead he is going to primarily focus on gameplay critiques. He then immediately proceeds to scold the game's narrative choice to require Adam's authorization for use of new abilities on Samus' power suit; the irony here of course being that he just got done saying that he wasn't going to focus on the narrative.

While it's true that this plot point is a departure from previous Metroid games that creates some unnecessary narrative contrivances, it is largely inconsequential where gameplay is concerned; though our aforementioned critic tries very hard to insist otherwise. Regardless, the end result for the gameplay is still the same: Samus gains a new ability after reaching various progress points throughout the game; just as in many Metroid games that have come before. The contention however is that this narrative change forces the gameplay to be more linear, removing the ability to sequence break that was previously possible in other Metroid titles. Unfortunately, there's several problems with this assertion. First, it should be noted that sequence breaking typically requires more advanced mastery of gameplay mechanics to pull off; mastery that most players won't have reached anyway until at least one full playthrough of the game, and even then, sequence breaking for the purpose of speed runs is still only a feature that concerns an exceedingly small portion of the playerbase. Your average gamer tends to pick up and play through a game only once and then move on. Hell, according to Steam's statistics, most gamers don't even accomplish that much. What I'm trying to say here is, to claim that this feature carries such a significant impact on the gameplay experience is to cynically inflate the severity of its omission. Lacking a feature that really only comes into play after you've already beaten the game hardly constitutes a grave indictment against the gameplay overall. Moreover, it's just wrong to begin with, as there's been plenty of games over the years that have allowed for nonlinear storytelling so that players don't have to follow a specific order of events, and Other M could have just easily followed this route if it wanted to as well. In all likelihood, Other M's linearity was an intentional design decision to make the game more accessible to wider audiences, not a necessity created by the Adam Malkovich plot point. Furthermore, this ignores the fact that previous explanations for why Samus always needs to regain her abilities were often just as contrived, whether it be Samus' suit being damaged in just the right way so that it loses a bunch of functionality but not all, or the fact that the Chozo somehow anticipated all this and planted the same abilities for Samus to acquire; sometimes twice on the same planet, or even just not bothering with an explanation at all, such as during the transition from Metroid 1 to Metroid 2 where Samus mysteriously loses all her powerups with nary a hint as to why. Now look, when it comes right down to it, I'm actually partial to hunting and acquiring gear myself rather than waiting for someone to authorize it. However, I do still feel like a lot of the outrage surrounding this has more to do with story objections and precedents established by previous Metroid titles rather than the gameplay itself being fundamentally flawed, because this isn't far removed from what other games like the Mega Man series or Shantae do, where simply by reaching various progress points, they just give you certain upgrades without making you have to "discover" them by exploring around the level. If you tell me that Adam's authorization takes away a degree of satisfaction from finding stuff on your own, then we're having a conversation here. If you tell me that the whole game is ruined just because Adam activates my gear now, then I think we've gone overboard with the nitpicks. And finally, all of this is to completely neglect the fact that Metroid Fusion was nearly just as linear in its structure as well, yet curiously this criticism isn't cited as a deal-breaker for that game, which brings me to my next point.

Most of Other M's gameplay criticisms also apply to past Metroid games in some fashion. The game only uses the D-pad and a couple of buttons? So does most of the classic sidescrollers. Linear progression so that you'll play through the story in the desired order? Hello Metroid Fusion. Lacking weapon variety because Samus just combines all her beam upgrades into one? That's also pretty much par for the course for Metroid games outside of the Prime series. The environments are bog standard? So was arguably the case for the first Prime game, and while Echoes may have had a more unique setting, its uniformly dark presentation and dreary landscapes made its environments even duller than Other M's anyway. It wasn't really until we got to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption when the Prime trilogy started offering both unique and attractive architecture, such as the fantastic floating city design on the planet Elysia. But what about missile expansions? Aren't they largely rendered pointless because of the concentration mechanic? OK, in fairness here, this mechanic is new to the series, but it should be pointed out that previous Metroid games increased your missile capacity by 5 per expansion, and as a result, it wouldn't take long before you could find yourself with such an abundant supply that unless you just got careless and constantly had them equipped all the time, you really didn't have to worry about running out either. Other M at least tried to mitigate this by making missile expansions smaller, but the inclusion of the concentration mechanic (which allows Samus to regenerate missiles anywhere as long as she can stand still long enough) only ends up worsening the issue regardless. Ultimately concentration is one of Other M's features that just outright doesn't make sense and should have been removed. Nonetheless, often times the missile expansions do become superfluous in other Metroid games anyway, but once again, this is not considered a noteworthy criticism of these games. To be clear, none of this is to say that all of these criticisms aren't valid. I think there is a lot that Other M could have done better. My objection here is in the insinuation that all of these criticisms suddenly add up to being deal-breakers where they weren't previously for other Metroid titles. It comes off as a double standard that is overcompensating for a lack of real major criticisms of the gameplay. If anything, Other M's gameplay is more of a throwback to the look and feel of its sidescrolling predecessors rather than something that fundamentally reinvents the Metroid formula, so unless your only experience with Metroid is the Prime trilogy, most of the core gameplay should come as no surprise to longtime Metroid fans.

Speaking of longtime Metroid fans, now would probably be a good time for full disclosure. I'm a huge Metroid fan. Samus is my all-time favorite video game character, and Super Metroid sat for many years at the number one spot on my all-time favorite games list. I love the series' foreboding and immersive atmosphere, the skin-crawling creature designs, and the iconic power suit which deceitfully hides an ass-kicking female underneath. At this point, you might be gleaning from me that I'm just a fanboy getting defensive about a bad apple in the franchise, but you would be wrong. I give no free passes just because of an established pedigree, and I have no qualms about eviscerating works from some of my most beloved universes. In fact, I have quite a few choice words for how much I find Metroid Prime 2: Echoes to be a convoluted, frustrating, and largely dull affair, but that's a story for another time. Despite these occasionally harsh criticisms towards my own favorites however, I know at the end of the day it's all in service towards making their successors better, provided that these criticisms are constructive and accurate.

My concern with Metroid: Other M though is that many criticisms leveled against it are not accurate or constructive. Instead, fans have painted a picture of Other M being an absolute mess on every level of its design, from its controls to its mechanics to its story, and as a result of this broad sweeping condemnation of the game, I feel it is sending the wrong message to the developers; that message being that we just need to go back to doing more of the same with the Prime series. This is not the right course of action for the franchise. Metroid needs to continue to evolve if it is to remain relevant as a series. While the Prime trilogy has received high critical acclaim, this has not been reflected equally in its sales figures, with the first game grossing a respectable, but modest 1.49 million units sold, and that's the highest selling in the series. Despite some of my cheeky jabs earlier, I do think this goes beyond just the fact that Metroid is a Nintendo-exclusive franchise that doesn't target their typical demographics as well. The Prime trilogy did get a lot right, but there are aspects of its design that feel dated, and over the years gamers have come to expect more from their games. We want more involving stories, we want well-paced gameplay, and we want satisfying mechanics. Yet in many instances, Prime just settles for a straight translation of its predecessors in 3D, and even takes a few steps back in other areas.

Let's start with Prime's minimalistic story structure. Perhaps the biggest reason why there isn't much to criticize with Prime's story as opposed to Other M is because there isn't much story there to critique in the first place. I would describe Prime's logbook approach more as "info-dumping" rather than actual storytelling, and despite that there were numerous logs to be found about Luminoth history in Echoes, I couldn't tell you anything about Luminoth culture right now even though I likely read through it when I originally played the game. That's because reading a bunch of text about it isn't nearly as memorable or engaging as actually living it as other games with more involved stories would have you do. Imagine if the Mass Effect trilogy stripped itself of every cutscene and dialogue segment, and instead only let you read the Codex entries about its universe. Now sure, I might still be able to learn about the Rachni wars and the Krogans being used and abused by the Salarians, or the First Contact War with the Turians, or the role of the Citadel Council, etc, but none of that would be nearly as interesting--nor would I likely be able to recall any of it--without seeing how it all connects to the actual events and story playing out right as I'm progressing through the game. I think most players would conclude after experiencing this version of Mass Effect that even though there's plenty to learn in the codex, the game's story feels skeletal at best because you don't actually experience any of it. You're just reading about it. None of this is to say that Prime is a bad game for doing something like this, nor even that stuff like Mass Effect's codex or Prime's logbook aren't welcome supplements to the gameplay. They can certainly enrich the experience, but they're not substitutes for actual storytelling, and I think Metroid could stand to do better. Sure, there are some interesting tidbits and crumbs to be found in the numerous data logs and ancient inscriptions found throughout Prime's environments, but video games are a visual medium, not books, and you can only get so much mileage out of a few lines of text on a screen. We expect more from games now. This level of story engagement may have been sufficient for the sidescrollers, but modern Metroid needs to strive for more. Narrative can help break up the monotony of gameplay, invest players more in the characters, and increase their motivation to find out what happens next; to discover what secrets will be revealed beyond just another missile expansion in that wall with a crack in it. And if we can make an interesting movie out of Tom Hanks having conversations with a soccer ball, we can sure as hell find a way to make Metroid's story work while still respecting that feeling of isolation that the series is known for. Maybe Samus commenting on every random thing she sees in an awkward monotone voice wasn't the best way to go about addressing that, but Nintendo at least had the right idea with Other M in the sense that it's time for Metroid's storytelling to catch up with modern gaming.

Then we have Prime's gameplay. Retro's insistence on a first person camera angle was bold, and while they did an admirable job converting Metroid's formula to work with it as best they could, it still comes with an inescapable cost. In the original sidescrollers Samus' power suit was more nimble and frenetic, with Samus being able to jump swiftly and deftly from one platform to the next. It really felt like the suit enhanced Samus' physical abilities and allowed her to perform feats of speed and precision beyond the limitations of a normal human body. Yet in Prime, this sense of speed all had to be scaled back to accommodate the new first person camera angle, as it could get disorienting quickly to have Samus dashing around and scaling up walls so hastily while playing from that point of view. As a result, this really changed the overall feel of Metroid in a subtle yet significant way, slowing down the pacing of the games and also scaling back platforming sections so that they aren't as prevalent as they were in Prime's predecessors. Consequently, this overall slowed pacing can often lead to a sense of dullness and lacking motivation to move forward at times. These issues are further compounded by the controls, which while functional, aren't particularly engaging because Retro Studios opted for single-stick movement and aiming. That might work fine for a third person game because you can make the combat more focused on movement and positioning rather than aiming and precision, but as Prime is already a first person game, movement is slower and more restricted, so the skill and satisfaction in combat should come from pulling off precise aiming and a quick trigger finger. Instead, you simply press the L trigger to lock onto your opponent and the game does the aiming for you. It just isn't as satisfying as dual stick controls found in other first person games. Thankfully, Corruption added some much-needed depth to its combat with the new motion control scheme that it brought to the table, though this still doesn't alleviate the general sluggishness of Samus' movement as mentioned previously. What all this adds up to is that despite the Prime trilogy's unquestionable prowess at creating a sense of atmosphere and immersion that truly lives up to the Metroid name, I still often found myself struggling to bother completing each game. In fact, without exception, it took me literally years placing each game on hiatus before eventually coming back to complete them. If I--a die-hard Metroid fan whose all-time favorite video game character is Samus Aran--took years to complete each Prime game, how do you think these games would be received by mainstream audiences and non-Metroid fans trying out the series for the first time? My guess is for those who did bother trying, many of them just gave up or didn't care to invest in these games beyond a one-time rental.

I mention all this not to divulge into a tangent about the Prime trilogy, but rather to illustrate the contrast where Other M succeeded, and perhaps why I find myself so much more forgiving of it than other Metroid fans. Other M marks the first game in the series of 3D Metroid titles that I actually found myself consistently motivated and engaged enough to play it through to completion in just under two weeks. That might sound like a silly achievement, but it bears significance given that the series had at least three other opportunities to accomplish this. It's pretty odd that this is the way my experience played out, as even I will acknowledge the Prime series succeeds on many technical levels over Other M, and yet if I'm being completely honest, I was still more consistently engaged by Other M, so it obviously must have been getting something right. But what is it? Well as touched on previously, I think the core of it lies in the controls returning to a more traditional third person view like the sidescrollers, granting Samus the speed and mobility she lost during the Prime trilogy. Now the gameplay feels more fast-paced, and Samus' suit is more responsive. Suddenly there's a sense of momentum again, and I can perform all the acrobatics I loved doing in the original games, along with even a few new ones, like the sensemove (dodge mechanic) and overblast (enemy pinning move). The frequently locked camera angles along one of the axes worked well in invoking the feel of the classic Metroid games while also helping make the D-pad controls feel more natural in a 3D environment. Switching between points of view was made seamless with the brief slowmo time effect giving you a chance to reorient yourself to first person while also serving as a cool visual enchancement. Despite claims of this feature supposedly being awkward and cumbersome, it really wasn't difficult at all to manage once you got used to it, so to the detractors of Other M's first person view, I have but one rebuttal. Git gud. Plus, I just love the Chozo power suit's design; it's one of the most iconic designs in gaming, and to finally be able to ogle at it again while I'm kicking space pirate ass is oh-so-satisfying.

Indeed, the worst offense you can truly level against Other M's gameplay is that it's just too much of a Metroid Fusion retread, but if we're being completely honest along that same vein, Metroid Prime was also technically just a Super Metroid retread in many respects. Of course, "well the other dun it tew" isn't an excuse for them to not try something more ambitious, but for me personally, I was just happy to finally play a 3D Metroid release that more successfully translates the feel of the sidescrollers' gameplay that I originally fell in love with; more so than the Prime trilogy was able to achieve, and that was enough for me, even though I certainly would have appreciated more. Not to say that Prime didn't succeed in its own right either; it worked well for what it was aiming to do, but much of the gameplay had to be reworked to accommodate that first person camera angle, and with that, part of Metroid's essence was inevitably lost in translation.

For all these reasons, I have concluded that the large majority of gameplay criticisms against Other M are ad hoc rationalizations in order to justify the visceral hatred toward its story. Because most players recognize that having a bad story alone isn't good enough justification to pan a game, yet when it comes down to it, mechanically 3D Metroid has never felt closer to its roots than in Other M, so unless you just never liked the Metroid sidescrollers or Metroid Fusion in particular, there really isn't much reason to object to it on such Earth-shattering levels as many fans would have you believe. And look, I get it, we all had our own perfect vision of our prized ass-kicking waifu pretty well-defined up until this point. I know we all envisioned Samus as a take-no-shit-from-nobody bounty hunter before Nintendo came along and told her to get back in the kitchen and make Adam a sandwich, but can't we just look past that for one moment and acknowledge that the actual gameplay was solid, and we could even glean from it some new features that could possibly be further refined in future iterations? I mean the dodge mechanic was pretty cool and satisfying to pull off, even if it was perhaps a little too easy. Maybe it could require more thoughtful timing to be effective with and be given its own dedicated button in the next release. And how about those enemy takedown moves, and the epic explosiveness of that diffusion beam? These are all great additions to the gameplay that I'd love to see in future titles.

It's really unfortunate that Metroid: Other M has received such a significant panning, because if you were to just strip out every cutscene where Samus has to speak, what you are left with is a surprisingly satisfying combination of Zero Mission's fast-paced gameplay coupled with Fusion's setting, perhaps reaching the closest Metroid has ever come to feeling like a proper recreation of its classic sidescroller counterparts in a 3D environment. If you're someone who has been holding out on trying this game after all the backlash, I recommend at least giving it a shot and making up your own mind. As for everyone else, I hope we can at least agree that whatever comes next, Metroid needs to continue to push itself forward and evolve with new ideas to rethink the formula, not just continually reiterate the Prime series.

That, and I'm sure we can also agree that AM2R was pretty fucking awesome. Just sayin'. Though we still have no sharks with laser beams. :(

[UPDATE 5/28/2017: Clarified and expanded a few points to this post.]

2 features that would make Project Diva twice as awesome

As we all know, SEGA's Japanese rhythm game Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F unexpectedly came state-side for the first time in August 2013. Undeterred that this would unequivocally solidify my weeb status, I went ahead and purchased the game.

I-it's not what it looks like. This is my sister's room. Yeah... My sister's room...

Since then, the series has continued to receive support with sequels released both in Japan and the US, and while I've certainly enjoyed my time with them more than I probably should have, there's always been just a couple features missing that I never understood why SEGA has continually neglected to follow through with. For instance, when I discovered the ability to not just change outfits but swap different divas for any song, I got really excited at the possibility of...

1. Unique vocal tracks for each diva on every song

It seems like the perfect idea for this franchise; a rhythm game feature that only the Project Diva series could deliver on due to the unique nature of the Vocaloids. As Vocaloids are just computer-generated synthetic vocals, SEGA doesn't need to front an expensive bill in order to pay for every single vocalist coming in and recording their own version of the song. Instead, it should just be a few clicks away in the Vocaloid software to swap one Vocaloid's voice for another, then re-save the vocal track and implement it into the game. This simple feature would add countless hours of replay value, as players would be encouraged to experiment with different divas on every song to see if they can find a Vocaloid that might sound better than the original, or to just try out amusing gimmicky combinations with duet songs that involve two divas. This would also solve the problem of seemingly every other Vocaloid besides Hatsune Miku getting the shaft with only two or three songs to their name.

Now it doesn't matter because you can always go back and play every Miku song with a different diva using their own unique voice. Besides, who doesn't want to see Kaito perform the Nyan Cat song in all his masculine glory?

So as you can imagine, I was less than pleased when I swapped divas in the song and it turned out that it actually just played the same voice dubbed over the wrong diva.

I thought half the point of the Vocaloid software is that it's supposed to make accompanying vocal tracks much cheaper and easier to produce. This seems like a huge missed opportunity to not take advantage of in this regard. I hope that some day SEGA will wisen up and implement this feature. It's understandable to omit in such a behemoth as Project Diva: Future Tone, but I imagine it certainly could have been doable in other iterations.

Now with more vocal options comes...

2. More Vocaloids

OK, this one's kind of an obvious suggestion, but you have to ask why do they still only have the six original Vocaloids after 4 releases now across Playstation 3 and PS4? Seems like the most straightforward and natural evolution for any series to introduce more characters into the mix with subsequent sequels. At a minimum we need some Gumi and IA up in here. Bonus points for Yuzuki Yukari. Come on SEGA, what are you waiting for?

Anyway, that's my two quick suggestions for how SEGA could take the Project Diva franchise to the next level. Now, here's a creepy GIF I found on Google image search that I didn't have anywhere else to put.

Did I miss a good idea? Let me know what you think should be in the next Project Diva game.

The Switch faces an uphill battle

I'm sure everyone and their dog has already written a blog about the Switch following Nintendo's recent presentation, but as a longtime Nintendo fan I feel obligated to offer my own thoughts on the system, so shut up and listen.

Now something that people have been oddly overlooking in their criticisms is that the dock is distinctly lacking in a toaster feature. I'm not really sure why I'm the first to point this out because this is a pretty notable omission. I mean come on, you could've called it the Super Nintoaster instead; a way catchier name. In the age of smartphones that can track your daily bowel movements via the PoopLog app, why the hell can't my Switch double as a toaster? Fucking scandalous. I demand answers, and I hope Nintendo provides a good explanation for this in the coming months if they hope to sell me on the Switch. Otherwise it's not going to come home the breadwinner of this generation.

Now that we got the most important issue out of the way, let's start with the good about the Switch:

Super Mario Odyssey is looking pretty fun. It's giving off some serious Sonic Adventure vibes with the whole sprawling metropolis setting and awkwardly inserting a cartoon character among normal-looking human beings, but ya know, also in the good way of looking like a grand adventure of epic scope; full of faraway places and secrets to discover around every corner. Something that I've felt the Mario series has been missing for quite some time now is a genuine sense of adventure and exploration that I haven't experienced since the Mario 64 days. I was always eager to find out what lies behind every door and hidden passageway in Peach's castle, and while I was unexpectedly wowed by how deftly Super Mario 3D World melded old and new school Mario into a very compelling experience, I was still left wondering if Nintendo was ever going to bring back that hunger for discovery that I used to feel so long ago. It appears that Odyssey intends to do exactly that, and it's going to be all the more glorious for it.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild will launch with the Switch. The Wii U made the grave mistake of launching with absolutely no killer apps out of the gate, and Nintendo seems to have taken this lesson to heart; this time unleashing a real titan right from the start. With Breath of the Wild being the first 3D Zelda to feature a fully realized open world and possibly even full voice overs, this is looking to be the grandest Zelda adventure yet; one that is giving off some fitting Princess Mononoke vibes.

The general aesthetic and design of the console is on-point. No unnecessary bells and whistles, and it has an adequate amount of buttons placed appropriately in comfortable positions. It doesn't feel like the "gimmick" (if it can even be called that) gets in the way this time, but instead genuinely serves a practical function in giving the system additional functionality as a hybrid console.

The price point is fairly reasonable for what you get. There's been some arguments that it should be cheaper because it isn't as powerful, but what people aren't considering is that mobile devices have always been more expensive in order to achieve the same levels of performance as dedicated home devices. At the $300 price point, it's cheaper than an iPad and roughly half the price of a new smartphone, and yet will probably outperform both in raw processing power.

No region locking. Not much to say about this here other than that it's about time and region locking sucks. Good riddance.

The return to cartridge-based media could turn out to be a huge plus for the system. We're long past the days when N64 games were severely limited as a result of the storage space on cartridges. Now flash sticks and SD cards can reach up to 128 GB or more if they so please, and because this is solid state storage, this means a couple significant advantages over disc-based media: speed and rewritable data. You won't have to deal with load times, and unlike discs, you can also write save data, patches, or even possibly DLC directly to the cartridge instead of the Switch. Many critics have expressed concern about the Switch's lackluster 32 GB internal storage, but I think this won't be as big of a problem as it sounds if they effectively utilize cartridges in this way.

And now the bad:

The shift to a subscription-based service for online multiplayer is an unfortunate trend in the console industry; one that now Nintendo is poised to follow as well. It's exploitative and unnecessary, and as someone who only casually likes to hop on multiplayer from time to time, it's frustrating that it creates this feeling that I'm not getting my money's worth out of these services when I don't always feel like using them. Furthermore, as a kid growing up when Halo 2 hit the gaming scene and Microsoft introduced their Xbox Live service, my parents were never avid supporters of my gaming hobby and I always had to scrounge up the money myself to pay for everything. Given that I was obviously too young to have a job, this proved notoriously difficult and most often I ended up just relying on free Xbox Live trials that I would occasionally inherit from somewhere, if I even got to play it at all. No doubt my experience was probably far from the exception and I'm sure that many other kids will now have to compromise and miss out on fun times online as a result of this money-grabbing pay wall. And to be clear: this is a cash grab, as Steam has been providing a fully featured online ecosystem complete with friends lists, voice, and text chat for a decade now completely free, and it has been more than adequate for my needs. Furthermore, given that Nintendo's online service has already been pretty lackluster in the past (I still can't even voice chat in Mario Kart 8), and there aren't exactly any confirmed launch titles yet that scream "I need to play this online," how they intend to build up a userbase for this new service is a pretty fucking big question mark block.

If you couldn't tell already, this kinda crap really pushes my buttons, so I now apologize in advance because I might get a little offensive here, but I have to get this off my chest:

Subscription fees can die in a fire. It wasn't acceptable when Microsoft started it, and it sure as shit isn't acceptable now that Sony and Nintendo are doing it. Spare me your apologetics about industry standards and how the money will go toward improving the service, among other bullshit justifications. I've heard them all before and you're just wrong. Deal with it.

Ahem, rant over.

Now onto the hardware. While I did say the price point for the system is good for what you get, the hardware still looks like it leaves much to be desired. I'm not sure if it was just something to do with the way the games were filmed during the livestream presentation, but a lot of the gameplay shown visually looked like it wasn't any better than the Wii U, and in some instances maybe even slightly worse. The system really needed to reach the performance of at least a base Xbox One in order ensure third party support, but now that possibility seems to be thrown in jeopardy once again, as developers will have to work extra hard to optimize their games for the Switch, and many may just deem it not worth the resources to even bother developing. This is probably the most significant hurdle for the Switch, as the Wii U's weak hardware and lack of third party support proved to be a death sentence for the system. While I will more than likely be picking up the Switch regardless as Nintendo's first party franchises have always been more than enough to satisfy me, this is no longer the case for most other gamers, and if Nintendo wishes to remain relevant, they have to bring on third party developers and keep them on the system this time. The weaker hardware also throws into question the idea that this is truly a hybrid console. If it doesn't even reach the bare minimum performance that other home consoles can achieve, it feels more like just a mobile device that also happens to have a convenient way to dock with your TV rather than a device that truly doubles as both a full-blown home console experience and an on-the-go mobile system.

And then there's the software. Launching with Zelda is a great start, but then there appears to be a big dry spell pretty much until November when Super Mario Odyssey hits the shelves. Is Zelda alone enough to carry the console for most of its first year out in the wild? Keep in mind that Breath of the Wild is also launching for Wii U, so Nintendo fans don't have to purchase the system to play the latest Zelda. With this in mind, what audience is left to purchase the Switch on launch day? No major third party games confirmed for launch, and one first party title that is technically optional for most Nintendo die-hards who likely already own a Wii U.

Also the Pro controller is $70. Seventy. Dollars. What the fuck Nintendo?

Anyway, with all these considerations in mind, I think the Switch faces a pretty stiff uphill battle. It still seems poised to be viewed as the "secondary" console that you only buy if you have enough leftover money after purchasing your main gaming device, but on the other hand its mobile capability may provide just enough of an incentive for consumers that it can inch out a niche in the market like the 3DS did. Time will tell I suppose. If only they just included the toaster, all of our fears could've been allayed.

But now let's talk about what I think Nintendo should have done instead.

The Nintendo Phone

OK, hear me out on this one. So we already know that devices are trending toward multi-functionality and being all-in-one machines. Even the Xbox One billed itself as an all-in-one entertainment center for your home. The Switch could've been the next natural step, fully merging the hardcore gaming experience with smartphones. Now you don't have to think about your limited pocket space between your phone and your 3DS; why not both? The system could work almost exactly like the Switch already does with a TV dock and detachable Joy-Con controllers, but with a few tweaks. It could run a modified version of Android OS, so you could use it as your phone when you're out on-the-go and doing your daily routine, and you already instantly have access to all the apps and phone games that come with running on Android OS straight from day one. But on top of this, you've also now got Nintendo's big exclusive franchises that are only available for the Nintendo phone, and with the attachable Joy-Con controllers and TV dock, it can instantly be converted into a fully featured gaming console.

The other added bonus to all this is that because this is billed as a smartphone that also doubles as a console, that means they can jack up the price and stick beefier hardware in it, while justifying the price because hey, we're just charging the same as you would normally pay for a smartphone. And also because it's a phone, you can just break the price up into a monthly payment plan to pay it off, again much like people already do with other $600 smartphones. Now it's affordable, we get to cram the Xbox One hardware into it, and I get to have my cake and eat it too. GENIUS. You could even go a step further with stuff like including a blu-ray drive built into the dock, so you could use it for movie playback on your TV too, and last but not least...

...toast your bread with it. OK, I'm seriously going to let this joke go now. But for reals Nintendo, think about it.

In the meantime, I won't be seeing you guys on launch day because I'm too cool to wait for this shit, and I'm already way ahead of you.

I'm now on Destructoid

Hey, just a quick update about a relatively minor change in plans for this blog. First things first, you can now also find my blog on Destructoid, located here. Due to my first post on Destructoid already receiving much more activity and feedback than I have ever received posting anywhere else, I intend to make Destructoid my new main focus going forward. This isn't to say that I am ending my blog here however. Rather, I'm shifting its role to being more of a miscellaneous blog that posts about anything that fancies my interests instead of just a gaming and anime blog. Of course, it's kind of been that type of blog already with my occasional shifts to political talk, but now I'm more or less making it official, because if you don't care about any of my opinions outside of video games and anime, you can now just head right on over to my Destructoid blog and follow me there, where I will only be posting about anime and video games. If you care to listen to anything else I have to say, you can find that here on Blogspot. I will still continue to post about games and anime at Blogspot as well; the difference is that basically this blog will include (nearly) everything I decide to talk about while Destructoid will be be exclusively focused on the topics relevant to that site.

So again, long story short, if you just want to listen to me talk about anime and video games while also generally having a more lively discussion in the comments, head on over to my Destructoid blog. If you want to hear me talk about anything that pops into my mind--gaming or non-gaming related--you can just keep checking back here.

That is all. Until next time.

Are multiplayer-only games inherently inferior?

[12/7/2016 UPDATE: Added a couple paragraphs to further clarify and expand my points.]

Creating a sock account so you can be matched with low-level plebs and squash them over and over again like the scrubs they are can be quite satisfying. I know I certainly feel a great sense of completeness in my soul after I've curb-stomped and tea-bagged my way to victory, but what about all those plebeians left reeling in butthurt and misery at the end of the day? They need to get their entertainment value out of the game too, and if not via the multiplayer, where else do they have to turn to? The 2016 Video Game Awards show was just recently held, and the multiplayer-only shooter Overwatch claimed the mantle of Game of the Year. This of course triggered little n00blets across the globe due to a multiplayer-only game being bestowed the highest title of the show, as if to suggest that this one fact alone is an automatic disqualifier for the title. To them I have but one response: Git. Gud.

Just kidding. Turns out I actually agree with them to an extent, but why is this the case? Isn't it a double standard that if someone develops a single player-only game it can be showered with praise and no one questions its lack of a multiplayer component, but if the reverse is true, suddenly everyone is demanding what happened to the campaign? Well no, I don't believe there is a double standard, because there's a key difference here: single player starts with an S while multiplayer starts with an M. See? They're not the same.

OK, I jest again of course. Going beyond just a matter of personal taste though, I do think there are some substantive differences between the two types of games that legitimizes criticisms against multiplayer-only titles. Namely that multiplayer-only games consistently lack in varied and significant content, often choosing to rely upon the dynamic and unpredictable nature of multiplayer interactions to alleviate the repetition, but this design choice only gets you so far. No matter how you slice it, a typical multiplayer-only shooter might release with only 12 playable maps and a handful of game modes. Each map itself is typically a fairly small arena; the entirety of which can be explored in under 5 minutes. Not to mention that you're unlikely to encounter any fancy scripted events that add some flare to the level, or fully-voice acted cutscenes that flesh out the characters and setting. You're generally limited to a singular objective that never fluctuates and all teams of players must compete for until the match is over. As a result, multiplayer-only games lend themselves to being played in shorter bursts, as the feeling of repetition starts to set in all too quickly and the average player will feel the urge to move on to something else. In contrast, a single player game can throw a multitude of objectives at you that give you a wide variety of goals to keep yourself occupied with for prolonged periods of time. In the classic N64 title Banjo-Kazooie for example, a single level of the game might have you collecting a number of items including 100 notes and 10 jigsaw pieces strewn across a vast map that is maybe 5 times the size of your average multiplayer level, all the while often requiring you to complete various other objectives along the way in order to collect these items, such as fighting bosses that test your reflexes and require memorization of their attack moves to defeat, or solving crafty puzzles that require careful examination to unravel. Each of these elements add variety to the gameplay that help keep it feeling fresh, and from a purely talent-based standpoint, they just require a lot more creativity and effort to produce. And this is just one level. Many single player games can have upwards of 20+ missions and 30+ hours of unique content to explore. EA themselves admitted that another multiplayer-only shooter released this year, Star Wars Battlefront, had a shorter development cycle than their standard AAA titles in order to meet the deadline of releasing the game while the hype was strong for The Force Awakens, and it shows. It too was another multiplayer title released with only 12 maps and a limited number of game modes. Within just a couple of hours, you can have experienced every map there is to play on it.

During the early days of the game industry, multiplayer was often treated as a tacked-on piece of content; almost considered to be "bonus material" if you will. In fact, famously during the development of Rare's seminal first-person shooter Goldeneye 007, multiplayer was only added in at the last minute. Unplanned, mind you. As in, it wasn't even done with the permission or knowledge of Nintendo and Rare's upper management. They only learned of it when a build was shown of the multiplayer already working. And yet despite the frequent treatment of multiplayer as a tacked-on component by the industry with only limited features and content, this approach to multiplayer development hasn't evolved much over the years even as we've begun to see the emergence of multiplayer-only AAA games, which is quite baffling. In theory, there's no reason Overwatch couldn't have released with double the number of maps and a multitude of different customizable game modes on launch. It's not as if Blizzard doesn't have the resources, and as a matter of fact, in all three of their other major franchises they offer a variety of ways to play. StarCraft II for example offers a robust single player campaign, co-op missions, versus matchmaking, and arcade mode where players can design their own custom maps and entirely new game modes. There's simply no excuse for the lack of content here. AAA publishers still want to follow the old model of tacked-on multiplayer for titles where the focus is supposed to be exclusively multiplayer, but at the same time they still want to charge you the full AAA price. I don't consider this practice to be acceptable.

Of course, one could argue that due to the spontaneous nature of multiplayer gameplay, it can create some lasting replay value that goes far beyond the amount of hours spent in many single player games. This is often true, and I'm sure I myself have probably spent more time in League of Legends than I have in some of my favorite single player games. However, I don't believe measuring the quality of games by the singular metric of replay value or time spent does them justice. After all, my top 10 list would probably look very different if I based it purely on this instead of my preferred metrics, and that's because something that should be considered when evaluating a game is also its peak entertainment value. Apologies in advance, but we're about to get into some ridiculous maths based on quantities that can't really be quantified. If I could visualize the entertainment value I get out of a game as a graph over time, it might look something like single player games generally starting out with very high peak values that steadily decrease as times goes on, while multiplayer games might start out at medium values, but decrease at a much slower rate thanks to the spontaneity of my opponents. As a result, I might find myself spending more time in a multiplayer game overall because it holds my attention longer, but at the same time it never really reaches the same heights of "awesomeness" I guess you could say I experience while playing other games; most often because of the lack of content and the inherent constraints that come with having to develop game objectives that all players can participate in meaningfully. In fact, amidst all of the supposed unpredictability of multiplayer interactions, there is a certain very predictable nature to these games. You know you're not going to be wowed by a sudden shocking plot revelation. There's no journey to go on with the characters where you get to see them grow and blossom in different ways. You're unlikely to encounter some epic event where you're dueling someone atop a moving train before it derails and explodes. Multiplayer levels need to stay mostly static so other players can navigate the map and participate too. You already know the vast majority of what to expect before you even put the disc in for the first time. Perhaps others feel differently, but this has generally been my experience with the medium.

So people can scoff at my immediate dismissal of multiplayer-only games, but at the end of the day, I do not do so without merit. None of this is to say that these types of games are bad of course, nor even that they can never be allowed to win Game of the Year, but when it comes to my personal choices, I do think they are at an inherent disadvantage and for good reason. There simply aren't a lot of multiplayer-only titles that offer comparable content and craftsmanship to their single player counterparts, and until they do, they don't get to sit at the big boys' table as far as I'm concerned. The fact that Overwatch received Game of the Year this year to me just reflects on how disappointing this year really has been. Then again, maybe I just need to git gud. Or perhaps I'm selling this achievement too short; it was the first year where a hentai game got GOTY after all. Progress, America.

Nintendo Switch revealed: Reaction and analysis

Nintendo has finally taken the curtain off the Nintendo NX and it's about god damn time. As many may know, Nintendo has for a long time been working on a new console under the codename NX, but have absolutely refused to reveal any details on it until now. Personally, I still question whether they're going to be able to market this system properly when it's only about 5 months away from launch. By skipping its reveal at E3, they no longer have any big conference to build the hype with, and the system will have already hit the market before next year's E3, so I hope they either plan to do a bunch of marketing on TV or some other mainstream outlet before this thing happens or it's going to be the Wii U all over again. But anyway, let's get into the console itself. So it's being called the Nintendo Switch, which again, why is it that Nintendo's codenames are always cooler than the actual name they decide on? The GameCube was originally called the Dolphin, the Wii was called the Revolution, and now the NX is the Switch? I mean, I guess it's a step up from Wii, which I think everyone was pretty sick of at this point, but really, maybe Nintendo should just go with their gut next time and pick the first name they use for it.

But dammit, I'm still going off on tangents here, and I'm just nitpicking at this point, so let's get back to the reveal. So the trailer starts off with a 20-something dude just chillin' on the couch gaming inconspicuously to the latest upcoming Zelda game. Now already the fact that Nintendo decided to start the trailer like this is a breath of fresh air. This is what many people have been saying for a long time; your audience has grown up Nintendo. Wake the hell up. They always kept branding their consoles as systems for kids and casuals. But they still make games that are just as fun as ever to play regardless of your age, and they offer plenty of hardcore experiences. You've got Metroid, you've got Bayonetta, you've got Zelda, and hell, even Super Mario 3D World will give hardcore gamers a run for their money in the final worlds and especially the bonus levels. There is some gruelingly difficult stuff there. Yet the average dedicated gamer doesn't really know this because Nintendo doesn't market to them. So I'm very glad to finally see as their first ad that this is clearly a system being made for the fans as well as the existing gaming market rather than trying to pull in people who were never fans of their products before and normally couldn't care less for gaming. Anyway, the ad continues, and we finally see what this system is all about. The 20-something dude stands up and then detaches his controller into two pieces before snapping it onto the console itself, and proceeds to leave the house and take his dog for a walk while continuing right where he left off with the game, now as a portable system. This is the key feature of the Switch which gives it its name, and I gotta say it looks excellent. We're finally getting a system that merges portable and big screen TV gaming all in one device, and it does so in a way that is effortless and slick. Next we have our 20-something dude-bro hopping on a plane and showing off how portable the system is, along with revealing that the system uses cartridge-based media, and so on and so forth. I'm not going to run through the whole commercial scene-by-scene, but long story short, it shows off a possible new Mario game, Skyrim, a basketball game, and what looks to be a version of Mario Kart 8 with expanded content.

It should be noted that the ad could be a little misleading here as none of the third party games featured in this video have been confirmed to be releasing on the Switch yet, so here we arrive at our first major concern. Like it or not, unfortunately consoles need third party developers on board for their long term survival anymore, and if Nintendo fails to hang onto third parties after the Switch's initial launch, it is likely another dead on arrival release. They should secure these titles as quickly as possible so people won't be left feeling misled. Now regarding cartridge media: I'm glad this is coming back as the landscape has changed since the days of the N64 where cartridges were more expensive and couldn't store as much space. Now you've got SD cards that can easily house 64 GB, and cartridges have much faster load times than discs, being that they are solid state storage.

Now let's do a full breakdown of the system:

Obviously since the hardware is housed in the tablet in order to make it portable, there's no reasonable way one could expect it to achieve performance on par with the upcoming Scorpio and PS4 Pro consoles. However, the value proposition here is based on the idea that you're essentially getting the most powerful handheld gaming experience to date, with the inclusion of proper buttons and joystick controls. With the PS Vita being all but dead to Sony at this point, and the 3DS beginning to greatly show its age in the face of modern smartphones, this presents itself as an attractive step up from all other handheld options because now there's finally a dedicated handheld gaming device again that is more powerful than your smartphone, and with proper buttons to boot.

The rumors (which have largely turned out to be true so far) stated that this would be a hybrid home/portable console with detachable controls, cartridge-based media, performance about on par with a standard Xbox One console, and a 900p tablet display for around the $300-400 price point. While bits and pieces of this have been confirmed, the official specs remain to be seen. Given that it has also been stated that this console will be based in the latest architecture from NVIDIA, this could mean that we're talking about the same architecture that powers NVIDIA's beastly GTX 1000 series cards, which if anything was capable of pushing Xbox One-level graphics in a handheld as tiny as that, it would certainly be possible with the GTX 1000's Pascal architecture. The NVIDIA Shield released just last year was capable of outputting performance on par with the Wii U/360/PS3 already, so considering this, we already know at a minimum that it is unlikely this won't be at least a marginal upgrade from the Wii U. The question is, will it only be a marginal upgrade, or substantial enough to reach the Xbox One? If it does the latter, then I think this does present itself as very attractive for the handheld experience, because no handheld platform currently boasts graphics at that level.

So sure, at the $300-400 price point, you're paying about the same as you are for a PS4 Pro despite not offering as good of performance, but on the other hand your typical latest smartphone sells for $500+ and doesn't offer anything for AAA experiences or proper buttons and joysticks, let alone graphics on par with current-gen consoles, so if you care about having a portable element to your console, then the value is easily justified. I think a lot of assertions about this console being underpowered aren't factoring in these considerations. If the rumor is true that it reaches the performance of an Xbox One, then this certainly is top of the line hardware for the mobile market.

There's still a lot of questions in the air as to how this will all pan out, but so far it seems as if Nintendo is making the right decisions and the Switch is being well-received. I'm cautiously excited for the platform and look forward to owning one in March if it has a solid launch lineup. Well-played, Nintendo.