Not Giving a Shit About Virtual Reality

Video games are changing.

E3 happed not too long ago, where it appeared that more games were going to begin following the path of VR (specifically the new "Resident Evil" game) and even current consoles are going to be receiving upgraded forms that can handle doing virtual reality shit. I have no clue how this shit works, nor do I care too much.

Now I've said before on here many times, that I'm sitting this console cycle out for the most part. I bought myself a Wii-U because I got it on a super cheap deal (and now I'm one of eight Wii-U owners across the planet, yayyyyyy) and I don't regret that purchase because I've had a shit load of fun with the console believe it or not. PS4 and Xbox One though I've decided to stay away from. I honestly haven't seen too much that's turned my crank as of yet, and part of me thinks I'm not going to either (granted there's a new "King of Fighters" game coming out that I would love to get my hands on, but I digress). VR accessibility doesn't make things any more appealing for me either.

Yeah, I know I sound like an old man here, and I don't care either. I remember when the Wii came out and everyone shit all over the motion controls gimmick; most saying it was just a fad and didn't really add much to the gameplay experience. Well, those people turned out to be right for the most part, and I think VR is more or less in the same vein. The technology itself is amazing, don't get me wrong. Video games have come a long fucking way since the Atari 2600 and all, and it really does seem like the future has arrived.

But ya know what? Fuck the future.

Maybe I've gotten to that age finally where I want to be left in the past as far as video games are concerned. Maybe the more technologically advanced they become, the more alienated I feel. When games started getting all about DLC and microtransactions and milking the fuck out of gamers for every cent that they can get, I started to feel out of touch. Now I feel even more out of touch than ever before. It happens to us all eventually though I guess, so there's that. Maybe I can hook up with other jaded gamers that have no interest in this shit huh?

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

A NEW "FRIDAY THE 13TH" GAME?!??!?!

Holy fucking hell there's going to be a new "Friday the 13th" game coming out? And you get to play as Jason fucking Voorhees? And you get to hunt down horny camp counselors? And it's loaded with blood, guts, and nudity? And it's officially sanctioned by original film director Sean Cunningham?

This is too good to be true.

Well, the game isn't quite created yet. It's actually on a Kickstarter campaign at the moment that is gaining some steam. The game itself is a multiplayer-style affair, as one player plays as Jason and seven other players take on the roles of his would-be victims as they try to hide from our favorite hockey mask-wearing, machete-wielding mass murderer. Yes, you read all that right.

This has all the recipes to be something awesome.

Then again, this also has all the recipes to be a disaster.

Considering this is a Kickstarter game, who knows if it will ever see the light of day. It just might (I honestly think it will, albeit not as soon as many would hope), but that possibility is there in the forefront given the history of video games trying to get going via Kickstarter. That being said, considering it has the OK from Sean Cunningham, and all the press it has gotten so far, this could be the game that makes us forget about that NES abortion from the late 80s...you know, that game that is probably one of the worst video games ever made?

No I'm not fucking exaggerating, that NES "Friday the 13th" game fucked me in the head so much as a kid that whenever I throw stones or rocks, I automatically make them curve upwards over their intended targets. Don't get that reference? You're lucky and I'm happy for you. You do get that reference? Then we know each other's pain.

Anyway, I truly hope this game sees the light of day, and I hope it's what we all are yearning for it to be. Either way, I can't wait to play it.

Oh shit wait, I said I'd never buy a next-gen console...and it's only going to be on PS4 and XBox One...

...shit.

Nintendo Needs to Stop Sucking

Oh Nintendo, what have you gotten yourselves into now?

The beloved video game giant seems to have fallen on hard times. After 2009/2010, it looked like no one gave a shit about the Wii anymore, only a few years after it set sales records and had everyone going apeshit over it. Truth be told, other than "Wii Sports", the "Super Mario Galaxy" games, Mario Kart, "Madworld", "House of the Dead Overkill", and a couple others, I didn't really enjoy much of what the Wii offered outside of the novelty of the Wii-mote. Last year for holiday time, Nintendo unleashed the Wii-U, their first HD console, which promised to introduce new gameplay elements including a touch-screen based controller and a library of intuitive games as well.

Well, it sucks...and so does Nintendo these days too.

Now let's get one thing straight here before you all start calling for my head. Even though I grew up primarily a Sega kid, the first home console I ever owned as a kid was the original NES. I also ended up owning every iteration of the GameBoy since its original launch, and I grew to love the Super NES on a journey of discovery after its prime. After that though, that was pretty much it for me and Nintendo. Although I loved the original DS, their home consoles on the other hand never did much to rock my world. The Nintendo 64, Gamecube, and Wii all just looked like shit to me, but then again around those times when they came out, I was too busy with my Dreamcast and Playstation's 1, 2, & 3 to ever really give them a deserved shot.

Now here we are in 2013, and Nintendo's profits are falling fast. They even made the curious decision not to have a featured presentation at this year's upcoming E3.

Let that sink in.

While Sony and Microsoft will be pimping out their new, upcoming next-gen consoles, the granddaddy of all video game companies will be absent.

Now granted, Nintendo has made strides with selling their products and making big announcements through social media outlets instead, but to option to not be included in the industry's biggest jack-off fest is disheartening, and kind of frightening, to say the least. Even though I said Nintendo sucks these days, the idea that there is a legitimate possibility that they could possibly end up bowing out of the video game hardware business if the Wii-U falters any farther is scary. That means that only Sony and Microsoft, two mega-conglomorate corporations, would be the only horses running in the video game race. That is scarier to me than anything else.

If Nintendo did bow out of making consoles and switched to being a third-party software developer/publisher like Sega did after the discontinuation of the Dreamcast a decade plus ago, that would mean we'd be seeing Nintendo's classic characters hitting XBox and Playstation. Could you imagine that? Seeing Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, and the rest on the same consoles that offer up "Halo", "Killzone", and the thousands of "Call of Duty" knock offs and wank-fests? Would anybody even care? Probably not...and that's sad.

So yeah, Nintendo...you fucking suck. You fucking suck for possibly having to say R.I.P. to making consoles, and waving the white-flag as being the only true video game company left. Do I really want Sony and Microsoft being the only two console developers left only because they have an endless amount of money and resources that could absorb any kind of loss that companies like Nintendo and Sega could only hope to dream of? Fuck no.

Stop sucking Nintendo, for the love of the video game gods, stop fucking sucking.

The clusterfuck that is PSN

It’s been a rough past couple weeks for Playstation 3 owners. First Playstation Network goes down mysteriously, with Sony eventually coming clean and admitting that they had fallen victims to a hacking group. A little while later, Sony would go on to admit that PSN account information had been “compromised”; meaning that everything from personal info (address, phone number, e-mail address, etc.) to possible credit card numbers had now fallen into the hands of the hackers.

Fuck.

That word was pretty much my knee-jerk reaction at this whole thing, which besides cancelling my debit card, I found myself pretty powerless in terms of this whole PSN outage. Not that I play video games online a lot, it’s just the other things I tend to use my PS3 for. More often than not, I use PSN for renting movies and streaming stuff from Netflix (which thank the technological gods still functions even with PSN out), but I’d be hard pressed to not admit that playing a game without PSN functioning just isn’t the same.

While Sony was slowly admitting what exactly happened (i.e., how much they fucked up in the first place with designing the whole PSN infrastructure), the conspiracy theorist in me started acting up a bit. Namely, what if the whole thing was a crock of shit? What if this was the means to an end with Sony starting to charge PS3 owners monthly fees for using PSN? Oh shit, now I’ve done it…strap yourselves in folks.

One of the things that attracted me to the PS3 over the Xbox 360 is the fact that its online functions are free. Playing multiplayer games and all the other things it does can be done without a monthly or yearly charge (and let’s be honest 360 owners, it’s a service that should be free in the first fucking place) are what really set me on purchasing it (as well as the built-in Blu-ray player, but I digress). However, it was only a few months ago that Sony introduced a feature called “Playstation Plus”, which charges a similar fee that Xbox Live does per year.

What Playstation Plus offers are early demos, occasionally free content (games, movie rentals, add-ons, etc.) and some other goodies, but it really isn’t anything special, and it’s completely optional to have…for the time being that is. And that right there is the problem for Sony: no one is a Playstation Plus subscriber. There aren’t that many subscribers, which has been admitted by Sony in surveys done among PS3 owners, which in the end, finds them not making as much of a profit as Microsoft makes with Xbox Live. So what’s the solution to not having nearly as many Playstation Plus subscribers as there are PS3 owners? Make it look like PSN got hacked, and then eventually tell PS3 owners that if they want true security from hack attempts, they have to subscribe to Playstation Plus?

Am I jumping to conclusions? Maybe and in all honesty, probably. However, this isn’t the first time something shady has happened with the PS3. A little over a year ago, there was a mysterious bug going around that was only affecting old PS3 consoles, wiping away the system’s HDD and profile information with it. During this time, Sony ended up selling more PS3 Slims than they had when that console model had first been released. It’s no secret that the PS3 hasn’t enjoyed the same kind of success that the Xbox 360 has had, but in essence, that crisis ended up selling more PS3’s than Sony had done before.

Coincidence? I don’t know, maybe I should put the video game conspiracy theories to rest, and just hope that PSN gets up and running again. I’m not holding my breath however (even though Sony keeps promising “soon”), and I’m hoping that Sony will give me and my fellow PS3 gamers some kind of severance for all the mishaps and security breaches. After all, I think that we deserve some free shit from the mega-conglomerate instead of consistently getting Sony’s dick put to us on a regular basis.

Still, no matter what, I’d take my PS3 over the 360 and Wii any day of the fucking week.