Sunday, March 5, 2023

En Eins Perfektewelt Anastasis

Similar to how the prequel had the major update, making it a complete game, En Eins Perfektewelt Anastasis, is said to be the complete edition of the second game, to accomodate with the celebration of the game's second version release 10th anniversary. The first arcade release was on System Board Y2 with the second one released on Nesica X Live 11 years ago. However, because of the delay for quality improvements, the game was released recently this year.

The game had a location test last year and when it was shown in action, its presentation still resembles the previous releases and future arcade games are released on the arcade systems of the generations later than the Taito Type X2's generation. Speaking of the Type X2, the OS running it had completely ended support but the original Nesica X Live service is still on-going to this day and it's strange to see one more major game update arriving to that platform way too late. The last game update to be released on that platform was Blazblue Central Fiction 2.0, the same update that is available on consoles, PC, and Nesica X Live 2 for the arcades.

Unlike the prequel, En Eins Perfektewelt never had a console/PC release at all. There may be rumors of a PC release but I don't want to speculate about it. Some of the articles about the updated game, En Eins Perfektewelt Anastasis, have inaccurate information about the arcade platform it's released on but some of the official tweets from certain Japanese arcade centers will prove otherwise.

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Pokemon Scarlet/Violet's Launch Controversy

For a modern family-friendly game like Pokemon Scarlet/Violet on Switch, a game being plagued with bugs and technical issues including inappropriate looking ones is unacceptable. As the latest game in the main series, it has tons of ambitious features like sending out your Pokemon to attack whatever wild Pokemon in range without needing to encounter one yourself, making things look real-time as opposed to traditional turn-based battle, having your own Pokemon to follow you in your adventure, organizing a picnic, riding the extraordinary Pokemon like Miraidon for instance and the presentation of Pokemon battle being more modern than before. There's no screen transition effect like the previous Pokemon games used to have when encountering a wild Pokemon or challenging a trainer/gym leader for instance but I don't know if that effect still exists or not in Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. Unfortunately, that kind of ambition for bringing Pokemon to later generation had already posed a bigger game development challenge for Game Freak.

Game Freak and Nintendo were already aware of the situation and looking forward to fix the bugs and technical issues in the game via future patches while adding additional features. Despite the game's messy launch, the amount of copies sold was ridiculously huge. Certain fans already demanded a refund because of such technical issues. The issues ranged from low-res textures, plagued graphical details, frame rate drops in certain areas, invisible objects, character bone motions looking awkward and one Pokemon that appears and clips through a character on a relative spot it's not supposed to land on.

In my opinion, there's no excuse for a modern family-friendly game on Nintendo consoles with 3D graphics to be plagued with bugs and technical issues as those can ruin the fun. Since the serious mistake from Game Freak, Nintendo and Pokemon Company occurred and Tommy of Intellivision had an insulting remark on Switch on the forum at the time, his shills being proud of this mistake happening can essentially mean that fans of Nintendo consoles and games including Pokemon franchise were more displeased over that mistake than they were over the previous controversies Nintendo caused.

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Pac-Man World Re-Pac - Updated Credits

A few months after the game's release, Bandai Namco and Now Production had made a patch that improved many aspects of the game such as credits, soundtrack and other stuffs that were changed. The credits part is the most important part of the update with the original team who made the game credited with True Accurate Information. Under the Sounds and Music part, it is Todd Dennis and Joey Kuras who worked on the music and sound part for the original version of the game under Tallarico Studios at the time. With this updated credit list, it can be proven that Tommy wasn't the one who composed the music for the game at all. Also, it is the first step in undoing the damage Tommy had caused in the past. The other games Tallarico Studios was involved in still have inaccurate credit information for the composer as if many websites still state that Tommy is the only composer due to him passing off others' compositions as his.

Besides the patch, there are two DLCs for the game and the Jukebox feature allows you to listen to the high quality versions of the songs in the Sound Test. The soundtrack in Re-Pac is said to be updated with high quality and uncompressed versions for free but the Jukebox remains a paid DLC.

Indeed, compliment is what I have for Bandai Namco and Now Production for a truly accurate credit information for the original team under Special Thanks category. However, this update should come with a new responsibility to keep those credits for the original team accurate and protected. The sites that wrongly claimed that Tommy Tallarico was the composer for this game should have corrected the credits in the game page once the update was out. I don't know for sure if there's some jerk-face out there who tries to make a malicious request to those sites to revert said changes or not but I think that the Special Thanks portion of the updated credits list should remain in the accurate form.

Aside from the Intellivision Amico controversies, there were other backlashes Tommy had done in the past such as giving Super Smash Bros games a low score in the most ignorant and offensive ways, and passing off other stuffs like sound effects he didn't make as his creations for instance but you can look up those stories yourself as they're beyond the scope of this blog article. His actions were not cool back then and the on-going controversies surrounding the Amico had already tarnished the Intellivision brand and his reputation further.

TRDR Pocket 2 controversy

It's like the manufacturers of TRDR Pocket followed Soulja Boy's shady footsteps and that kind of footstep is what only losers follow. There are two reasons why the TRDR Pocket 2 is as controversial as the first one:

  1. False advertising
  2. The console is as scammy as the first one even if Soulja Boy is not involved

The design is more or less the same and who wants to play games on this thing? For advanced games like TPS or FPS games, it is still problematic for both TRDR Pocket 1 and 2 as they have a lack of trigger/shoulder buttons. It's even worse if there's no controller support at all for those games. The inclusion of 4G is somewhat a retarded idea for an Android device that is a portable game console. About the false advertising for the console I mentioned earlier, the console is said to have AI-related features which can be made dangerous due to how much of a scam the console is even if Soulja Boy is not involved.

This pretty much angered gamers even more despite the fact that Soulja Boy is not involved this time in which the lessons given to learn didn't mean anything to the manufacturers of TRDR Pocket 2. They downplay and don't bother to learn those lessons and try to brainwash people with AI related features that try to "teach them any social skills and stuffs" with that TRDR Pocket 2 console. Why learn something from TRDR Pocket 2 console when you can learn a couple of things from modern games' interesting concepts and cutscenes? The TRDR Pocket 2 console isn't going to change your life in a good way and you're not going to make friends with it. Gamers are more interested in highly popular games normally and they discuss what goes on in those games.

A smartphone//tablet running Android has a better screen than TRDR Pocket 1 & 2 consoles and is attachable to whatever external gaming peripheral. Such peripheral may or may not be like the Switch or Wii U console in terms of design but it's a better gaming experience that way for advanced looking mobile games. For other portable Android gaming devices, they have a better design than TRDR Pocket 1 & 2 but that's a different story.

In the end, TRDR Pocket 2 is a scam with bullshit features just like the original TRDR Pocket. It's not worth your time and money, and your mobile device is already more capable for mobile gaming in the first place.

Saturday, October 29, 2022

Splatoon 3 Virtual YouTuber Livestream Controversy

Splatoon 3 seems to be a hit on Nintendo Switch as it is as fun as the previous Splatoon games but there happens to be one Virtual YouTuber-related controversy that crossed the line. Nintendo wasn't happy about that controversy that occurred this month that they took actions against several members of a group I don't know of. The members' channels were terminated and the policy of taking screenshots or making videos of Nintendo games was changed as a result. At least, said members of that group whose channels were affected later apologized for their indecent acts.

What those members of a Virtual YouTuber group I don't know of did was green-screening something disturbing on the opponents' ink and covering that ink with their own team's in the game. Whether it's a new way or another way, it's still inexcusable enough that it caused a controversy. Sure, the Switch has a couple of mature-rated games that are also released on other game platforms but most of the first-party games from Nintendo are mainly family-friendly or teen-related games and Splatoon series is said to be family-friendly. However, in this case, the incident that occurred recently had gone too far and I'm reminded of another gaming controversy that happened two years ago in which the game's writer had come up with disturbing Pokemon and Harry Potter related tmaterials prior to working on some indie game. She realized her mistake and apologized but what cannot be scrapped is the consequences when such gaming controversy occurs. At least, it's better to realize the mistakes than to keep defending something extremely disturbing.

There are other Virtual YouTuber-related controversies I knew of like a group of trolls spamming the live chat with disturbing spam messages that caused many Virtual YouTubers' channels to be terminated, an AI software where fan arts of whatever Virtual YouTuber can be produced that may or may not cause some confusion on whether those artworks are actually produced using that tool or not, etc. The former was already bothersome like it's obstructive to business with the latter about fan arts generated using the AI software in a disturbing way being more concerning.

Saturday, October 22, 2022

Meta's Horizon Worlds metaverse is so disastrous that they force employees to love and use it

Man, is this a vicious plan disguised as a discipline they've come up with for employees because the employees kept avoiding the app? The employees developing this metaverse app were already feeling disgruntled by that plan after people knew how disastrous the app is. As a tech demo, the showcase was said to be interesting but it turned out the app was poorly executed from the start. The avatars were missing the bottom half like legs for instance and the graphical potential was unspeakably low. Were those avatars intended to be simple or full-fledged to begin with? Even the Playstation Home has superior graphics to Horizon Worlds metaverse, ranging from good looking avatars to scenery having sufficient potential with proper textures, proper water effects and superior shadow effects. Hell, the Playstation Home had some mini games to play through at the time that it gave players the reason to explore various virtual places and interact with other players.

The bigger concerns included the highly expensive Meta Quest Pro VR headset which cost $1000+, privacy concerns surrounding Facebook and Horizon Worlds, and the inferior quality of the metaverse app that the consumers are already better off with other VR apps like VRChat. It's no wonder lesser and lesser amount of people is using Horizon Worlds metaverse. It's like those at Meta came up with Horizon Worlds with business in mind and they expected the employees to use it for the sake of meetings and stuff. Why do you want to buy that super-expensive VR headset as an add-on for video conferencing when you can simply use Zoom or Microsoft Teams, instead?

Upon seeing that video title of this gaming news from Yongyea's YouTube channel, I was already concerned on what other greedy game companies would do after that news broke out. What would Ubisoft do to the game developers who were against NFTs? What would Intellivision do to anyone's who has been criticizing the Amico? Plus, is there such a thing as alternative game engine for Intellivision Amico game development ever since the recent Unity controversy caused by Unity Technologies CEO? If Unity is the only game engine for that platform and Intellivision found out that some game developers were using some other game engine like Godot, what would Intellivision do to them?

From Yongyea's YouTube channel

Indeed, there may be weird and fishy obstacles to whatever criticism we have but it's ridiculous for the employees at Meta to be forced to use and love the disaster that is Horizon Worlds metaverse. It's greedy and vicious that forcing people to use and love something they hate is making them hate it even more. One other thing I learnt is that criticism of a product can happen anytime from pre-release to post-release but I should be careful to find the right time to criticize the product. If there's a backlash surrounding whatever gaming product, it opens doors to rants and criticisms from content creators for instance.

Wednesday, October 12, 2022

COD MW2 Phone Number Requirement Controversy (A controversy borrowed from Overwatch 2?)

If the phone number requirement for Overwatch 2 wasn't controversial enough and is a feature that won't go away for new players of the Overwatch series, even the upcoming COD MW2 will borrow that feature. That's Activision Blizzard for you which can mean game franchises coming from both sides. The problems Activision Blizzard mentioned like bots, cheaters and other types of gaming misbehaviors still exist to this day but to make use of phone number to tackle such problems isn't going to help a lot in my opinion as there are concerns of the solution's downside like someone using someone else's phone number to do such malicious activities for instance. So, if you see someone doing such malicious stuffs in the game online, you should report that person. Of course, it's not an easy feat from that point on as once that person's account is terminated for their disruptive behavior, they can come up with another account to circumvent the account termination and continue such nefarious acts using it.

It's like Activision Blizzard downplayed the backlash Overwatch 2 caused and they're trying to extend it further with other games like COD MW2. You may wonder if they're out of their minds enough to cause another gaming controversy in a row or something after a series of controversies surrounding Diablo Immortal occurred. It's worse than we thought but again, people were right to be disgruntled and vocal over such controversies like this. And to anyone claiming that people were "entitled" for feeling displeased, disgusted or whatever over the Diablo Immortal gaming controversies, it'll be best to reflect on this mistake.