Category Archives: archived features

WoW, What am I Doing?

Not too long ago I wrote a blog about how I was gifted a subscription along with the latest expansion for World of Warcraft. To say that it’s been a period of adjustment would be a gross understatement. I think I can genuinely say that I haven’t played a game as overwhelming as this before.

Before I describe the fugue state I entered upon launching the game, I think it’s fair to briefly explain how we got here. Out of the sheer desire to talk to my friends, all of which had been consumed by World of Warcraft as of late, I expressed my increased feelings of isolation I had been feeling to one of them. In their extreme generosity and kindness, they gifted me a subscription along with the latest expansion in an effort to get us playing and talking together again. I was apprehensive, but desperate to engage with my friends once more.

I was told that I’d get a level boost that I could apply to a character to get me to the latest content, avoiding the 120 levels of what I assume were going to be pure grind. It sounded good on paper, and although I expressed that I have literally no enthusiasm to play these kinds of games, my friend decided to pull the trigger on the purchase anyway.

So here I was, with a game I never wanted to play, at the ready. After a much longer than expected download of 60+ gigabytes, I was ready to jump into to the world of Azeroth and see what all the fuss was about.

I didn’t press play for a few days.

But eventually I did, and I created a wolf-man (I don’t recall the race name) Death Knight, which I was told was a pretty straight forward class that was pretty powerful and dealt a lot of damage. Sounded great for a first timer like myself. After picking the wrong server, playing the tutorial, then doing it all again on the right server, BigDouglas was finally ready for prime time… except he actually wasn’t.

Before I could do anything with my friends, I had to go through a pretty excruciating tutorial with a lot of cut-scenes that honestly, while well made, were very presumptuous in assuming that I knew literally anything about the lore or these characters. But whatever, it all looked cool.

After getting killed in the tutorial a half-dozen times, I finally trudged through and made it to a city where my quests involved walking over there to watch a cut-scene, walking somewhere else to do it again, and eventually getting on a boat to watch another cut-scene before I was thrown in prison to play through another mission where I died several more times.

I don’t mean to come across as dismissive or anything, but it’s incredibly difficult to muster any enthusiasm or excitement for what World of Warcraft did, even though it’s pretty standard in the MMO and RPG space. The whole time I kept thinking to myself, “man, this would be way more interesting if it wasn’t an MMO and was a game that was more mechanically fun to play.” I get that people like the gameplay loop in World of Warcraft and MMO games in general, but to me they’re incredibly dull and cumbersome.

I will say though, the world of Azeroth and the broader aesthetics of World of Warcraft itself are beautiful and made me eager to explore more and see everything I could. Something I had never really considered but seems painfully obvious now is just how cool everything looks. It makes sense that the world building in such a long running MMO would be phenomenal, but I guess it never clicked until I got to see it first hand.

But for as cool as everything looks and how well designed it all clearly is, it doesn’t shake the fact that this is still an MMO and I was starting it from what was basically the endgame.

It turns out, there’s a lot of stuff to pay attention to, manage and keep track of in World of Warcraft, and boy howdy is it overwhelming. Aside from minor gripes like every menu being incredibly small and hard to read, there’s just so much stuff on the screen to look at. I know this is an MMO thing and not and exclusive World of Warcraft, but holy hell is it a lot deal with. And it’s all compounded because I’m starting at level 110 where I have way more stuff at my disposal.

My eyes were glazing over, my brain couldn’t comprehend anything anymore, and I was getting frustrated because I didn’t know what any of my spells did and kept dying because of it. I wasn’t having a good time.

I eventually wished my friends a good night and disconnected. My friend texted me with a new plan of attack. He and the others I was playing with said they had heard people have more fun while having a root canal than I did playing World of Warcraft. That’s why they decided it was time to start from scratch.

Level one. Level one of 120. I don’t know if I’m going to survive this, but I owe it to them to give it a shot. I’ve never been more terrified and intimidated by a video game than I am right now, but I guess I’ll have to spin up a new character and hopefully gain a better understanding of World of Warcraft.

Building a New Splinter Cell

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A YouTube channel named NoClip, recently released a documentary series about the rebooted Hitman games of the past few years. It highlighted developer IO Interactive and their separation from Square Enix, the way they designed their levels and AI patterns, as well as some other very interesting tidbits about their struggles and accomplishments. You should check it out. But it got me thinking about another stealth-action franchise that could use the same rebooting treatment that Hitman received. Of course I’m speaking of Splinter Cell.

Just like the Hitman franchise, Splinter Cell has had some really good entries in the series, and some not so great ones. Hitman eventually pivoted off of a divisive release in the form of Hitman Absolution, into the phenomenal Hitman 2016. Absolution was a fairly linear game that tried to follow in the steps of popular action games of the time, ultimately betraying the core conceit of what those games were traditionally like. Hitman 2016 threw linearity out the window and placed you into clockwork, systems driven levels that had dozens of way to approach them, with multiple objectives for you to complete, a bevy of disguises and weapons at your disposal, and plenty of over-the-top methods for you to dispatch your targets.

But it isn’t the only tried and true stealth-action franchise that made drastic changes to the formula. In a similar fashion, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain did something of a soft reboot in terms of its mechanics and play style, favoring an open world and systemic driven design as opposed to a more curated one. It wasn’t without it’s issues, but most people can agree that it was the best playing Metal Gear, despite having a middling story at best.

So I got to thinking, if Hitman and Metal Gear could reboot themselves so successfully, Splinter Cell should be able to as well. While it’s easy to say that Splinter Cell should just do the same thing those games did, it can’t. There are fundamental differences in the way those games play that just don’t translate perfectly. But if we were to cherry pick elements from either of those games to slot into a new Splinter Cell, I bet you’d come back with something pretty good.

In Hitman 2016, you’re infiltrating these massive and mostly public spaces, adopting the persona and disguise of whomever you need to be in order to gain access to some of the more guarded targets. You’re usually trying to get rid of some sleazy rich guy who’s throwing a party or staying at a hotel or something. There are more “public” spaces for you to occupy and plan around, making it feel more like a puzzle game than anything else.

In Metal Gear Solid V, you’re infiltrating various military installments spread throughout this massive open world, returning to your home base every so often to cash in your missions or progress the story. There isn’t a ton of variety in the way you actually approach these missions, but you’ve got a pretty impressive tool kit at your disposal, from a rocket powered arm that you can shoot into the faces of your enemies, to a dog that wields a knife in its mouth and will cut fools up at your behest.

Splinter Cell is different kind of game in those regards, striving to be a more grounded depiction of military efficacy than the other stealth-action franchises. That established ideology about what those games do makes it difficult to open up the floodgates and allow for more of the weird shenanigans that Metal Gear and Hitman allow for, and Sam Fisher as a protagonist isn’t exactly the “dressing up like a clown and sneaking into a birthday party” type of secret agent.

But despite all of that, here are some elements from both Metal Gear and Hitman that a new Splinter Cell should implement in a new entry.

LEVEL DESIGN

The star of the modern Hitman games is most certainly the levels that you play in. What Hitman 2016 doubled-down on were these clockwork levels that were massive sandboxes for you to explore, where NPCs had routines and goals for you to intercept and take advantage of. Almost every corner of the level provided you with some new opportunity, tool or costume for you to use to dispatch your targets. Along with that, the way the AI was scripted was such that no matter what you did or who you removed from the world, the game was able to pick it back up and make sure everything didn’t grind to a halt because you killed a particular NPC or were caught doing something.

I think that same philosophy can be applied to Splinter Cell in an extremely effective way. In Hitman, the levels all provide Agent 47 with opportunities to hide in plain sight, playing to his strengths while also providing you with a ton of variety in terms of settings and weaponry. Because Agent 47 is more focused on infiltration, the levels can be anything from an active movie studio, to the suburbs, or to a fashion show. That’s the beauty behind the core concept of Hitman.

Whereas Sam Fisher is more of a traditional spy, running military ops, sticking to the shadows and using his environment to help shield him from detection. Instead of the normal, shoot out the lights and sneak up behind a guy routine, a bigger and more complex level could afford you new opportunities to take when stalking your prey.

The problem is that Sam Fisher as a character has a pretty one-note arsenal. He’s a super effective spy who knows how to sneak around, shoot guns and climb obstacles, but he can never dress up like a hipster and pretends to be the drummer in a band so he can kill the lead singer. It’s what makes creating these more intricate levels so difficult, because nobody ever cares how Sam Fisher gets into an enemy base and kills everyone, because he’s on a mission to a dangerous place where there are rarely any civilians to worry about.

CHALLENGES

There are so many things that make Hitman levels so infinitely re-playable, but the challenges and missions have to be up there. Hitman encourages you to replay levels and approach them differently by rewarding you with experience for throwing a pair of scissors at your target’s head while dressed like a clown, or by pushing a loud speaker off the awning above them and crushing them. By completing these challenges, you’re rewarded with new outfits, starting points, and weapons you can use to flex your creativity. It’s a brilliant loop that consistently proves to be the voice in your head that says, “yeah that was cool, but how about this?”

In Splinter Cell though, you have maybe 3 or 4 ways to actually deal with your targets, and in reality you’re only going to either shoot them or strangle them. That’s kind of another big problem Splinter Cell runs into if it tries to adopt a more Hitman-like approach. How do you encourage your players to play differently, and what does that even look like? Sam Fisher doesn’t dress up in goofy outfits and he rarely hides in plain sight, so how do you make new challenges and missions within this limited tool set as well as what the audience expects from a Splinter Cell game? Without completely redefining what kind of character Sam Fisher is you get kind of locked into a box.

I personally wouldn’t mind seeing an all new Sam Fisher who gets tasked with taking down targets that aren’t purely enemy combatants, but I think people would lose their minds if he suddenly started dressing up as a waiter or something.

WEAPONRY

Some of the deadliest and most effective weapons in Hitman are often the most innocuous ones. I’ve killed more people with pasta cans, letter openers, and cheeseburgers than actual guns, because in Hitman, everything you can pick up becomes a deadly weapon. I’m willing to bet Sam Fisher is just as effective as Agent 47 when it comes to improvised weaponry, but I can’t really recall him ever exhibiting that beyond throwing a brick or a rock.

This issue seems far more surmountable than the previous ones considering that you can put plenty of flotsam and jetsam in the levels that Sam could throw at the heads of his enemies. Cinder-blocks, bottles and so on and so forth all would narratively fit in the self-serious tone of Splinter Cell. But that tone can be a little limiting in terms of what you can cram into a new Splinter Cell.

I want to see Sam Fisher try to play guitar poorly in an attempt to fool his target. Then, when he realizes that the target isn’t buying it, smashes it over their head. He might then say something like, “everyone’s a critic” and move to leave the level. But I sincerely doubt I’d ever see that.

TONE

Speaking of the self-seriousness of the franchise, we arrive at my last point. The tone of Splinter Cell, hell, the tone of all the Tom Clancy games are just so painfully self serious. That isn’t to say that striking a serious tone is a bad thing, but it is limiting if you’re trying to build out levels, opportunities and basically everything I’ve mentioned up until this point.

Even when you look at something like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a game that also provided players a systems driven sandbox to skulk around in, that game still had levity built into it. By Metal Gear standards it was pretty serious, but you could still do some wild stuff in that game like making your horse poop on command that would lighten the mood.

I can’t really recall anything like that happening in the Splinter Cell franchise. Sam Fisher will make the occasional quip, but he’s never drowning his targets in the toilet they’re vomiting into like you can in Hitman or confusing enemy guards with 20 inflatable dummies of himself like you do in Metal Gear.

The Tom Clancy approach to things is to make bad military humor that is funny to maybe a handful of people out there. Like, there had to be one person out there who cracked up every time a character shouted the phrase, “shitballs!” in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, right?

Despite my personal preference for a lighter toned game, I just think that from a design perspective it has to be easier to create fun opportunities than just the standard military fare ones. I’d rather watch the ejector seat on a jet launch a man into the sun than see a guy just shoot a guy with a sniper rifle. It’s why I appreciate the Hitman games so much. Maybe Splinter Cell just isn’t the franchise for me anymore, but if I had my way, it would be a much different game in tone.

I desperately want a new Splinter Cell game, but as time goes on I get a little more cautious about what that game looks like. Between the need to change and the desire to stay true to the existing formulas, I’d have to imagine that part of why a new Splinter Cell hasn’t been announced is because the well of ideas that exists within those confines might be running dry. I just hope that if there ever is a new Splinter Cell game, whatever it turns out to be, it manages to keep me playing for as long as the Hitman reboots have.

The Adventures of Bepis Man

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As I was perusing the newest releases on the blighted wasteland that is the Steam store, I came across a free game called Burning Daylight. From its pictures, it looked like some sort of Inside or Limbo experience. An atmospheric puzzle-platformer if you will. As it turns out, Burning Daylight really wants to be like those other games, but doesn’t get anywhere close to their pedigree. But, the one thing it has going for itself, is that I’ve been introduced to my new favorite character and best friend for life, Bepis Man.

I want to take you on the journey of Bepis Man, and help you get to know him the way I did. Heads up, I am going to be spoiling the hell out of this game, so proceed with caution.

Let’s begin, shall we?

I was there when Bepis Man woke up. He seemed very confused and wasn’t doing his walking very good. But I guess the calming ominous lights in the background really motivated him to giddy up and go, although he didn’t control any better because of it.

I should mention, Bepis Man was totally nude. Just letting his deempus just kinda wave in the wind.

Bepis Man faced off against a treacherous door puzzle that involved pushing a button on a wall, and then opening a door. Bepis Man was very brave and did a great job.

While Bepis Man loved to show off his impressive member, the lack of clothes really seemed to grind his beans. He was shivering, and even though Bepis Man was my favorite pangus-warrior, I knew that he needed pants if he wanted to stay warm.

Unfortunately for Bepis Man, there just wasn’t a slick pair of JNCO jeans anywhere in sight, but there were these cool Air Jordans he could snatch off a dead man. Bepis Man being the nasty boy he is had no quibbles about slipping his meaty feet into those tasteful pumps.

Bepis Man, determined to warm his skin-pipe, found a hoodie. It kept his northern regions nice and toasty, but unfortunately his namesake was still exposed to the elements.

You know what Bepis Man values more than a bitchin’ pair of pants? Augmented Reality. Thanks to another fallen and equally nude person, Bepis Man was able to get his mitts on the latest in AR tech. The problem was, the batteries were all dried up. We needed to find him a USB-C cord, stat.

There’s a very strict pants law in the world Bepis Man is from, and he knew he was committing a capital offense. While he would’ve loved to get in the mix and do the electric slide with his pals, his bold new ways would just land him in pants-prison.

Bepis Man had reached his apartment, I think, and found a charging dock for his AR goggles. But more importantly, there was a sleek pair of track pants just chilling on the ground, waiting to cover his exposed dingle-dong.

Bepis Man has an app on his goggles that he relies on way too much. It’s called Pantslr, and it highlights the nearest set of pants. Now Bepis Man was able to conform to the closed-minded (clothes-minded) society he was reluctantly a part of.

Apparently, next to the naked bepis factory is the set from Blade Runner. Bepis Man was just as shocked as I was by this startling turn.

Bepis Man does not respect social norms, and will absolutely make it obvious that he is eavesdropping on your conversations. Bepis Man just doesn’t give a fuck.

Bepis Man finds a place in the world where his bold, bepis ways might be accepted, nay, even encouraged. Bepis Man is looking for love now that he found his pants. It’s just so hard finding someone to connect with.

Bepis Man likes what he sees.

There is a pretty harsh turn from dumpster love to religious cults. Bepis Man is confused and will be sneaking around this one. He just isn’t a big fan of religious institutions. Respects your beliefs though. He’s a good dude like that.

The quest for pants and romance kind of got out of hand, and now Bepis Man is using his goggles to jack into the mainframe or something. Bepis Man has become unto a God. All hail Bepis Man despite his distaste for religious institutions.

Bepis Man visits the set from Indiana Jones where they stored the Ark of The Covenant. He’s just a big fan of the original trilogy, and honestly, is kind of an apologist for the fourth one.

Turns out they were hiding more than just the Ark of The Covenant in this warehouse. They got trees up in here. Bepis Man has never seen such lush greenery, seeing as he was raised in Blade Runner-ville all his life. It really is beautiful, although Bepis Man is also discovering he’s got a wicked pollen allergy.

Bepis Man finds large swimming creatures and wonders how big their meat-sticks are. Is it the size of his? Much bigger? Is he the size of this creatures bepis? He had so many questions.

Bepis Man finds the room where the X-Men keep Cerebro. Is definitely curious to find more mutants like himself.

Gasp. Bepis Man has found where they’re incubating the ultimate bepis-fighters. His brethren are in those pods, begging to live a simple wing-wang based life. Bepis Man will help the only way he knows how: by touching every button he can find.

Turns out, the buttons just flush the pod boys down the drain. Bepis Man, you did a bad one there. Really boned it up on that one.

Bepis Man comes face to face with his creator. It’s another, older, Bepis Man who lives in a floating chair.

Wrinkly Bepis Man offers his Bepis son a choice: Become the Bepis-lord, or eat some apples.

Bepis Man loves apples though, and apparently eating an apple means you can’t then go sit in a chair. Which quite frankly is bullshit, because I’m sitting in a chair and eating and apple, and it totally is doable. Did you even try, Bepis Man?

Then I shit you not, the game just ends. That’s it. No bepis closure. No explanation about what the fuck I just endured. Nothing. Just a blank screen.

I can’t really complain though, the game was free and it only ate up a half-hour of my life. Which, considering I met my new best friend, Bepis Man while playing it, I’d say it was a net positive.

Burning Daylight is a game that wears its inspiration on it’s sleeve, and desperately tries to deliver a message about the dangers of gamification or something, and some weird jabs at vegans and religions, but I wouldn’t say it’s aggressively bad. It controls poorly and can’t hold a stable frame rate, but there are worse games you can spend a half-hour with. And besides, we got Bepis Man and his impressive penis journey out of it.

Thank you Bepis Man, and good luck, wherever you are.

The Borderlands Conundrum

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The announcement of Borderlands 3 and the details that were revealed about it left me feeling pretty indifferent about it. I’ve always had a weird relationship with Borderlands as a franchise and Borderlands 3 seems to continuing that tradition.

Before I get down on the franchise and the Borderlands 3 announcement, I figure I should mention that there are things that I really like about it. For one, the art style has always been appealing to me. The cel-shaded graphics gave the franchise a unique identity and personality that it lacked when Borderlands 1 was initially announced. It was a smart decision that enabled the series to age visually age more gracefully than other games of its time. Borderlands is and will continue to be a very impressive and memorable game based on visuals alone.

Along with the visuals, some of the mechanics of the series were impressive for their time. Borderlands made multiplayer a fairly painless process that made it easy for people to drop-in and drop-out without much of a hassle, which is something some games still struggle with today. The randomly generated, infinite guns thing is also cool in concept, but in my experience I rarely found any of the really cool or interesting ones that I’ve heard people talk about. The talking guns, or the guns that fire other guns never really dropped for me, which is a shame. Ideally I’d like for Borderlands 3 to not only add more interesting gun types, but also make it so I can see some of that stuff at lower levels.

But as with anything I write, there are aspects of Borderlands that I really don’t like. For instance, the writing always been a contentious issue for me – particularly the humor. It just always felt like your dad sent you a meme from 5 years ago that they just discovered. “Yeah dad, I guess that cat does want to ‘haz’ cheeseburger” doesn’t feel too different from, “Yeah Claptrap, that is a cool dab you just did.”

Perhaps maybe my least favorite aspect of the Borderlands game is the lack of customization. Borderlands 3 doesn’t seem to be changing this in any meaningful way from what they’ve shown thus far, but it just seems crazy to me that in a world where games like The Division 2 and Destiny exist, you can’t create your own character. Sure those games have pretty limited customization options, but you’re still making a character.

Instead, Borderlands 3 seems to be continuing the tradition of picking one of four characters and going from there. Which wouldn’t be so bad if they included a lot of customization for them, which in all fairness they could do. But based on their past outings, you’ll probably get a couple of color swaps, and one or two that give your character a beard or a hat or something.

It just feels like Borderlands 3 could benefit from having a robust character creation system. Sure some of their existing characters were neat, like Zer0 and such, but I think it’d be cooler if I could just make my own weird cyber ninja, or robot summoner instead of having to pick from four premade options.

But Borderlands 3 does seem to be fixing one of my least favorite parts about the series, which is the world design. I’ve always found the post-apocalyptic style of the world of Pandora to be incredibly dull. But that’s a personal preference of mine, I just never found the post-apocalypse to be that interesting, whether it be in Borderlands or Fallout. In Borderlands 3, you’ll be traveling to more diverse planets which will be a great change of pace and a much needed shot in the arm for the franchise.

There’s so little information about Borderlands 3 at this point that all of this is just speculation, but I’m just not confident that Gearbox will take too many chances and try to change up what’s worked for them in the past. Considering their last few games didn’t exactly set the world on fire, particularly Battleborn, Aliens: Colonial Marines, and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel to name a few, I just think Gearbox is apt to play it tremendously safe. Then when you add in some of the scandals and allegations surrounding the company and its CEO Randy Pitchford, Gearbox really needs to change the discourse around themselves.

I don’t envy the position they’re in, and I really hope that Borderlands 3 is the game that they need it to. Hell, I want that game to be good so my friends and I can have something we can play together, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Who is Stadia For?

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Recently, Google went ahead and unveiled their new gaming initiative in the form of a streaming platform called Stadia. Stadia aims to deliver high quality, low latency gaming experiences to various smart devices including televisions and smartphones. It all sounds very impressive to say the least, but I still have many questions about the specifics of the platform, among them being, who is it for?

Don’t get me wrong, I think the technology behind the Stadia is fascinating and worth developing; especially if you’re a platform holder like Valve or Microsoft. For those companies, you have players who might want to play their games away from their devices, and an effective streaming solution could essentially make any platform a mobile platform. But with Google leaving more questions on the table than answers, it leaves me wondering what role Stadia is meant to play in the gaming industry.

The first and most obvious answer is that it’s for people who want to play games anywhere on any device. Stadia seems like a great opportunity for people with a passing interest in games to try them out in a simple and straightforward way. In that regard, I could definitely see Stadia being a great way to play games without a major investment. But considering Google didn’t divulge the pricing model for Stadia, we’re left to speculate and fill in the blanks ourselves.

The two obvious routes are either, buying games through a Google storefront and streaming them to your device, or paying a subscription fee to play from a library of games. Both options are still cheaper than buying a console or computer as well as a game. For someone with a casual interest in games, this could be very enticing, but that well can only be so deep. At some point Google has to convince the people who play games more regularly to get on board with Stadia.

The pitch of playing a game running at 4K and 60 frames per second without relying on hardware limitations sounds great, but if I already owned an Xbox One X or a PC capable of running 4K60, what’s the selling point for me? In that instance, I already own the hardware, I’m not reliant on my internet connection to provide me with a low latency and high quality experience, and if I bought a physical copy of a game, I own it outright. As long as I have electricity, I can still play my games in most cases.

Gamers at this point have already willing put on blinders to the fact that their digital purchases are more licensing agreements than an actual bill of sale, so the mass adoption of Stadia isn’t completely out of the question. But in this case, the player essentially is relinquishing all ownership claims to Google. It isn’t your hardware, it isn’t your software, and I’m willing to bet that whatever EULA that will be included with Stadia that no one will read, will expressly outline your lack of ownership. Which isn’t out of the norm when you look at video streaming services like Netflix or Hulu. There is absolutely a precedent for this business model.

But that isn’t what I think gamers will really be apprehensive about. What I believe will be the biggest obstacle is how Google plans to entice existing players on other platforms to introduce more potential points of failure into their gaming experiences. There are a ton of well worn arguments, that despite how many times they’re raised, continue to be valid. Google and their track record with abandoning projects that don’t hit big, quickly enough, along with the sorry state of internet bandwidth and cap limits in the United States, are among the biggest obstacles that stand in the way of user migration.

Those alone are some of the biggest obstacles that Google has to navigate through, but when you drill down even further, you have to consider that there are games that require the lowest input latency possible, like fighting games and shooters. The technology would have to be incredibly impressive to make those games work at any competitive level, professional or not. And even if Stadia could make latency free game streaming a reality, the user is still beholden to their internet provider and the reliability of the connection.

I don’t think I would be as skeptical of this entire initiative if it was Sony or Microsoft doing it, not because I trust them more than Google, but because it could be a supplemental service that I could use to play the games I already own. If I could pay for an extra tier of PlayStation Plus with game streaming included in it, that would be a nice bonus feature to have.

Google seems to be trying to position Stadia as the next biggest competitor in the gaming market, and I just don’t see that as a possibility, at least not when we know so little about it. The whole situation just feels a lot like the Xbox One reveal back in 2013. Microsoft made this big, all digital push in a direction that the industry was already heading in, and tried to prematurely force it into existence, resulting in a disastrous launch that they’re still paying for. But 6 years later, digital purchasing is so prominent that companies like GameStop are having trouble sustaining themselves.

I’m optimistic about the technology behind Stadia and what it means for the industry at large, but I’m just not sold on it at the moment. Maybe when Google reveals more details later this year I’ll change my mind, but at this juncture, it just feels like little more than a novelty. The whole industry seems to be heading down the road to an all streaming future, but I don’t know that Google is going to be the car we all ride in.

Animal Crossing is Still Incredible

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Every morning I pack my bag with a water bottle, maybe a lunch, a charger, and my Nintendo Switch. I usually have some free time at my office, and like having the option to play games while I’m there. However, lately I’ve been bringing another, older hunk of plastic with me that has two screens and doesn’t fold. Of course, I’m talking about the Nintendo 2DS that I bought on a deep discount.

You might be asking yourself, “Ari, why would you bring that hideous blue monstrosity anywhere in public with you?” Now, while I agree that the 2DS is a garish nightmare-brick, the reason it’s been accompanying me to work is because it has Animal Crossing: New Leaf on it.

There are two main reasons why this matte-blue doorstop of a portable console has been my platform of choice lately. As I mentioned before, Animal Crossing, but also because I never really owned a 3DS or portable console before. I grew up with a Gameboy and stuff, but I missed out on almost two decades of mobile gaming hardware since then for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

The last time I played an Animal Crossing game was the one on the original DS. A DS that an ex-girlfriend loaned me until our relationship collapsed under its own weight. So I never really got much time in the DS ecosystem. But that game left an incredible impression on me that didn’t make its impact known until I played New Leaf.

I have a problem with incremental games in general. For instance, I’ve been playing Wiz Khalifa’s Weed Farm on my phone for almost two years now because it’s a mindless checklist for me to engage with and clear daily, and also because I like seeing the numbers get bigger. Animal Crossing now occupies that space for me, and the best part is that it isn’t hitting me up to spend twenty dollars on “weed bucks” or whatever.

It’s a mindless, pleasant chore list, that’s so peaceful and chill. Maybe this penguin wants to trade me a dartboard for some pants, or maybe some shifty art dealer is trying to peddle some bullshit in my town. Whatever it is, it’s relaxing and non confrontational in a way that I am super into these days.I just boot this hunk of azure plastic up and get to go fishing with some cool animal friends, buy stuff from some awesome raccoons, or help the world’s worst museum curator in the world. I would way rather get my incremental, idle game fix from Animal Crossing: New Leaf than I would from anything I can get on my phone, including Animal Crossing Pocket Camp.

What I think I appreciate the most about Animal Crossing: New Leaf, is that it’s deceptively in-depth. You can look at promotional materials and just assume it’s a slight experience, offering nothing of substance. And if you asked me to describe what I do daily in the game, it can sound pretty boring. But there’s a ton of secret, under explained, or purposefully obfuscated mechanics hiding under the surface of the game.

The game never told me that I had to buy more stuff from the shops for them to expand and grow, but that sure as hell makes sense. I didn’t know that you could wish upon a shooting star and get magic furniture delivered to you the next day, but here we are. It’s just a bunch of little hidden systems like those, that add so much depth and variety to this game.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things about Animal Crossing that drive me up a wall, like inventory management, and how much people like to talk to me about scanning Amiibo figures in for stuff. That and the fact that even though six creatures live in the town, and I’m one of them, and the only human, and also the mayor, every shop owner treats me like it’s the first time I’ve been there. I’m the mayor, remember my very unique and non-animalian face for once in your lives. But those are nitpicky concerns at best.

All of this was spurred on by the announcement of a new Animal Crossing game coming to the Switch this year. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into that game and explore whatever weirdness Nintendo injects into it. The saddest part about it is, whenever it does finally release, all of my citizens in Animal Crossing: New Leaf will die from loneliness because I’m never going to pick up that ugly-ass Nintendo 2DS again.

The 2019 Reset

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As you can probably tell, things look a little different around here. Some stuff got shifted around, the artwork is looking a little different and our YouTube channel is a little… barren. But that’s all part of the plan. See, we’re working on revamping The Bonus World a little, and trying to make it more diverse and sustainable.

Last year we tried streaming a lot of stuff to mixed results, and while it was a lot of fun, it just wasn’t something we could all reliably do. So we stopped doing any video work for a while, and though it sure made my workload a lot lighter, it did leave a large gap in our website.

So we’re trying some new things out here. Or rather, we’re trying to find a method that works for us. We’ve got a new video coming out this Friday at 3:00pm ET, which is exciting, and the written stuff on the site is still going at it’s normal pace.

There are a lot of things I’d like to do in 2019 in regards to The Bonus World, and bringing back video is a big one. We’d also like to start streaming at some point in the future, but it’s unclear as to when that’ll happen. But till then, the blog will continue to update weekly, articles will occasionally pop up, and video features are going to make a return.

If you want to watch any of our content from last year, it can still be accessed on the site in the Archived Shows portion of the drop down video menu. Lastly, the site is going to fluctuate a bit as I finalize the design and layout of things, so if menus move around, or the art changes again, it’s probably just me fiddling around on the back end because I can’t ever just leave things alone.

Thanks for continuing to hang with us, and we hope that we can make some big strides in 2019. Fingers crossed.

Inspiration vs. Plagiarism

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In the wake of the Filip Miucin saga that’s unfolded over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself thinking about the broader implications of what he’s done and the effect it has on everyone in and around the games coverage industry.

In case you missed it, Miucin was an editor at IGN who published a review for Dead Cells that was found to be almost entirely plagiarized from a YouTuber named Boomstick Gaming. In response, IGN acted swiftly and fired him as well as removed his review. After posting a now removed “apology” video on his personal YouTube channel, he essentially challenged people to try and find more examples of his plagiarism, confident that there was nothing more to uncover. Much to the surprise of nobody, the internet found plenty of it.

So here we are, a few weeks after the impact of this bombshell and there’s been no shortage of opinions about the incident itself. The majority of the response to it has been in agreement that IGN did the right thing and that Miucin deserved to be fired. While I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, there is one thing that Miucin mentioned in his former “apology” video that still sits with me.

In essence, he asserted that all reviewers basically talk to each other about their opinions on the game they’re reviewing. Overwhelmingly I’ve heard reviewers say they don’t do that because it defeats the purpose of writing a review, which is to get the writer’s opinion on the product. They do their best to remove themselves from the conversations around a game so they can provide their own opinions on it, free from any external influences. A reviewer is supposed to relay their experience with the game to their audience in an effort to arm them with the information necessary to decide if a game is worth their time and money.

That kind of insight is great for consumers, but tough when you’re trying to build your own outlet that serves similar functions. I have to be conscious and make sure that what I’m writing is my opinion and not the one I heard on a podcast or in a video. Because if I’m just aping a review from someone else, then what’s the point of me doing this at all? It’s important to me to make sure that everything I write is in my own voice. Because if I want to show that I’m worth a damn as a writer, I have to be able to compartmentalize what the discourse around a game is and be honest about the experience that I’m having.

There is no excuse for plagiarism, but it’s easy for me to see how just following a reviewer or streamer can color your experience before you even have a chance to play the game. That isn’t what happened with Miucin and that isn’t an excuse to justify plagiarism. Instead, it’s a reminder to be more thoughtful about what you’re writing and being more aware of your actions.

The Space Billionaire of No Man’s Sky

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Recently I documented my early yet harrowing return to No Man’s Sky, but ultimately came away realizing I wasn’t far enough into the game to formulate any real opinions on the experience as a whole. Just as I was when it initially launched, I was overwhelmed and ill-prepared for the latest chapter in my space chronicles. Beset by barren planets, space cops, and hostile environments, I was just about ready to accept that No Man’s Sky was just not the game for me. That was until I met The Space Billionaire.

After the debacle that was my first attempt at exploring the universe, I decided to re-roll my character and get a fresh set of planets to explore. I still started off on a planet that hated me, but this one was a little bit more forgiving than the toxic wasteland that I initially started on. Luckily I spawned in right next to an outpost, which meant I’d be able to find a reprieve from the sweltering heat outside. As I set off to go find and repair my spaceship I received the notification that a player was joining my game.

This mystery player landed their ship right in front of me and I was fully prepared for them to try to blast me into smithereens repeatedly until I quit the game. Once they exited their ship, we stared at each other for a few seconds before I decided to play nice and wave to them. They waved back. I gave a thumbs up and headed over to the clearing where my broken-down ship was sitting. I’d survived the first contact.

At my ship, I went into my inventory to begin crafting the necessary components that would allow me to get off of this boiling planet and hopefully find one more welcoming. That’s when the stranger’s ship touched down next to me again, followed by four more. I genuinely thought this was going to be it for me, but I maintained my composure and went back to my inventory to craft more components. But there was a problem.

My inventory was filled with canisters of freighter fuel. Every available slot was packed with this mysterious item that I had absolutely no use for. The stranger then said to me, “you should sell those, they’re worth a lot of money.” It was then I learned that text chat was a thing and responded with the appropriate amount of gratitude for the gifts they’d bestowed upon me. “You should be able to buy a good class-A starship with that. Go and sell that stuff as soon as you can, and try not to die.” And just like that, they took off into the stars and vanished out of sight, and out of my game.

So there I was, a man with a busted ship and potentially millions of space-bucks to my name, slowly dying of heat exhaustion on this unexplored planet. I had no space in my inventory to craft anything that would help me survive, I just had tons of fuel for ships I didn’t own. I needed to get back to that outpost quickly and offload this stuff, not only for profit, but to literally save my life.

I arrived at the outpost, ready to begin my life as Rich Spaceman, the richest guy in this particular universe. That would’ve been the case were there actually a terminal for me to sell things at in this particular outpost. I had so much potential profit in my pockets, but no way to sell any of it. It was then I remembered that my ship had plenty of inventory space to put some of this stuff in, so I ran back to it only to discover that those were filled up too. These benevolent gifts were going to be the end of me.

But lo and behold, I had one space that wasn’t filled with fuel, but rather 2 pieces of salt that I’d picked up at some point. I obliterated that salt as quickly as possible, opening up a precious inventory slot that would allow me to craft the necessary components to escape this Twilight Zone-esque hell I was living in. With my ship repaired, I set off to the nearest space station to collect my not-at-all-hard-earned cash.

Now flush with way too much money, I made my way to the nearest planet which happened to be really darn nice. A lush landscape, overflowing with resources and devoid of any space cops. A place where the temperature is perfect 75 degrees all the time except for when the occasional boiling rainstorm comes through. This was the first time that I was able to really connect with No Man’s Sky and feel like I had some space to breathe and work at my own pace.

I haven’t actually spent any of my newfound millions yet and probably wont until I absolutely have to, but I’m more than grateful to The Space Billionaire and their philanthropy. Their generosity coupled with the luck of finding a peaceful planet so early have made me very excited to explore more of what No Man’s Sky has to offer. Although I do wonder what The Space Billionaire is up to now. I like to think they’re out there being an angel investor to somebody else in need, helping someone else trivialize a major portion of this game.

Thank you Space Billionaire. I’ll never forget you.

Coming Clean: I Will Never Play These Games

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I’ve been living a lie for a very long time now. I’ve deluded myself and maintained these misguided beliefs for years, and it’s high time I came clean and admitted the truth to myself. There are games that I own and have installed, that I will never play. For months and in some cases years, I’ve had these games ready to go at a moment’s notice. Now it’s time to let go, uninstall them and let them live on eternally as painful memories of money I once had.

So here’s some of the games I’m breaking up with.

Destiny 2

I recall playing in one of the beta phases of Destiny 2 and never playing it again. Having a less than stellar time with its predecessor, the beta made it abundantly clear that Destiny 2 was not going to be the game for me. Eventually it ended being one of the flagship games in a Humble Monthly offering and I installed it as soon as possible. Nobody I knew had Destiny 2 or had any inclination of acquiring it. Hell, I didn’t even want to actually play it, but somehow it sat on my hard drive for months. Now it’s time I let it go and move on.

Besiege

It feels like in order to properly enjoy Besiege I’d have to be an engineer, and that feeling was only reinforced when I’d look at some of the community creations on the Steam Workshop. People were making functioning tanks, fire-breathing dragons, and actual Transformers while I was having trouble making a cart with wheel that could turn. Downloading and playing with these creations is fun and all, but it’s nowhere near as engaging or satisfying as I imagine building them are. So it’s time I was honest with myself and admit that I will never learn to be good at Besiege.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

This is another Humble Monthly burden that’s been haunting my hard drive for a while. I don’t know what line of reasoning I used to convince myself that I’d actually play this game, but it must’ve been good. I historically do not play strategy games, especially hex-based ones, yet somehow Civilization VI has lingered on my computer for months. I feel kind of bad for never having even attempted to get into it, but I need to face the facts and just cut this one loose.

It’s here that I’m noticing that maybe the Humble Monthly subscription is to blame for most of my lingering, delusional installs. But that would be passing the blame, and that’s exactly what an addict would do.

Blackwake

Last month Blackwake was one of the three early unlocks for the July Humble Monthly subscription. In the wake of Sea of Thieves being a huge letdown for my friends and I, Blackwake was a game that we briefly looked at to get our pirating fix from. Being the only subscriber to the service in my friend group, you can probably go ahead and fill in the blanks as to why this one never got, and never will get played. At best, I have a passing interest in pirate-themed games, and one that relies on having multiple friends to play with is pretty much a nonstarter. So I’m cutting this one off before it gets anymore time in my library. Blackwake, I hardly knew you.

Undertale

This is more of a symbolic gesture considering that Undertale basically takes up no space on my computer. It isn’t that I had no interest in playing it, but having not played it when it first launched felt like I missed out entirely on the experience. If you were following anything gaming related on the internet, It was kind of impossible to not learn about the cool things that Undertale was doing. Everyone was talking about this game and how amazing it was, which is why I just felt like I needed to play it myself, but at this point I just don’t care anymore.

It feels good to finally free up some disk space on my hard drive, but it doesn’t change the fact that I could write a version of this article 300 hundred more times thanks to how much money I’ve wasted over the years on games I’ll never play.