Unfortunately fans of anything can ruin interest. It's probably why people don't even consider watching Rick and Morty, or playing Dark Souls.
Rick and Morty is more than just the idiots yelling about szechuan sauce and pickle rick.
And you can play Dark Souls how ever you want, you aren't playing it "wrong".
Ultimately avoiding something because of the fanbase is just cutting off your nose to spite your face though. Most of the time it's fairly easy to just enjoy the TV series/sport/game/whatever and just ignore/avoid the shitty part of the fanbase entirely.
The actions of fans can very easily color a person's impressions of something. If fans are really enthusiastic about something and just generally like discussing it in positive ways it is going to make people think more positively about something. If fans are hostile, aggressive, and attack people for not liking something the "right" way it is going to cause people to turn away. The actions of fans does create a mental link between them and the thing they're talking about. It is a normal human reaction. Its one of the reasons positive word of mouth is such an important thing for any product. The way people talk about something or act when discussing it will always have an impact on your feelings. An utterly toxic fanbase is a good way to turn people away from something as it would mean having to associate yourself with those people if you want to discuss the thing they are being toxic about.
I just got my rift a few days ago. Holy crap Asetto Corsa looks amazing in it, I truly feel like I'm in the car.
Project Cars, while being a better looking game, actually renders poorly in the rift compared to AC.
The issue I currently have with the rift though is my glasses are too big and get pushed in really hard I fear I may break them. I ordered a smaller pair to hopefully fix this.
If the second pair doesn't work look into VR Lens Lab. They make custom lenses for the Rift and Vive for prescriptions. I'm planning to get a pair of lenses from them in the next couple months, once I find a new place for my Rift, with more space, since I have the same problem.
Pretty good take on the situation, Jeff. I agree. I love my Rift, but it is hard to recommend to people that don't already have a lot of interest in the tech and an understanding of the state it is currently in. With video card prices the way they are right now it makes it even harder to recommend. If this deal had hit a couple months ago, when the 1070 was at an all time low, it would be a lot easier to recommend. And, sadly, anything less then a 1070-class card I don't think would be ideal for VR at this point in time. If people aren't willing to jump into VR fully understanding its current state it is best to wait and see where things unfold in the future.
Unfortunately, I find this movie to be one of the worst of the series... so many holes in the story, no attention to detail, probably because they are trying to create reasons to do the dumb stunts, rather than accent the plot with stunts. When I say that, I know a lot of people chime in and say "It's an action movie, why do you care about the story?" But that's just it... by the time we got to 4,5, and 6, this series was doing way more than it needed to do to make its timeline and story work, that is resulted in a really complex and interesting multi-movie journey that many other series with six movies could only dream of.
I think this one might be where the series "jumps the shark," in a sense, but I suppose we'll have to see what comes out of F8, to make that claim. (From the trailers... I don't have a lot of hope)
I've heard many people say they love this movie, but I think that many of them are blinded by their sentimentality from the final scene. Don't get me wrong, I teared up as much as the next guy... but it didn't make the movie great. :(
The first time I saw the movie I loved it before it got to the final moments. I don't really care about the "plot" in any of these movies. Focusing too heavily on trying to tell a serious story is what hurt 4 for me. Sure 7 has plot holes big enough to fly that helicopter through, but whatever. That's not what I'm watching these for. I'm here for the moments where I see something and go "Holy crap, that's amazing" or see something so insane that it makes me laugh and smile. And also to see this cast of characters get back together for more adventures. Whatever the excuse they use to get from set-piece to set-piece is kind of irrelevant to me. As long as it gives the slightest justification for the moment, I'm all good.
@tiffanytryhard: It is not a huge leap. He mentioned he has the cops in his pocket and they can't do anything. Obviously he comes from a place of power. Plus the game is building up corruption as a major theme so that would fall in line.
It's not a huge leap to posit that raper guy did something shady to turn the tables and get the book thrown at YOU, but come on: YOUR OWN PARENTS LITERALLY ABANDON YOU. I can accept that you get a raw deal and now have to do some community service, it happens, but everyone in your life who should nevertheless believe you thinks you're scum.
When I was a teenager, I was riding in the passenger seat with my friends, holding a box of their beers in my lap. A cop saw the bottles, pulled us over, and since I was the one holding the beers, I took the fall, even though I didn't even drink (I never have). I got stuck with community service, even though I was innocent, because there was just no way around it and no adult involved could believe that a teen caught with a box of beers doesn't drink. Except my mom. She believed me, because she knows me.
This game wants me to accept that a kid got busted for whatever fake charge, told his parents what he actually did, and the parents said, "Lol, nope, go into foster care, see you in a year." Nah, I don't buy that for a second.
I don't think you realize how radically different Japan and Western countries are, especially culturally. I have no trouble buying the main character being sent somewhere else for a year, even based on what little I know about how Japanese culture reacts to "troubled" kids. Also, don't forget we're not given the entire story yet. The opening of the game shows the cops being corrupt as heck and the way the drunk guy was talking it's clear he is VERY powerful. We don't know what kind of charge he was brought up on. I'd suspect assault or possibly it could have been sold as a mugging attempt. Given Japan's legal system, the burden of proof is on the accused not the accuser, if no one defended the mc's claims he's boned.
The setup for the game really requires a basic understanding the Japanese legal system, which can make it hard to understand why things went so poorly for our main character. Beyond that it also requires some understanding of how negatively Japanese culture treats kids that get in legal trouble, especially the kind the mc was likely convicted of. There is a stigma attached to kids with records, more so than you see in places like the US. There is a reason the trope of a "delinquent" kid or teen is played up so often in anime.
These games are starting to have better production values but man... pretty much all of this stuff continues to not look even remotely worth it. If this is the trajectory VR development is on then we are easily 3-5 years out from proper game experiences that you could say "yah, stop playing Doom and play this thing instead."
It will take time. Like any launch of new hardware it takes time for game developers to figure out the right way to make things work. I bet within the first year to year and a half we'll see more "traditional" games on VR headsets that take advantage of what VR offers. Right now everyone is playing around and experimenting with different ideas. If Sony keeps heavily pushing PSVR that could turn into a very good thing for the market as it will mean more and more developers getting on board and making games.
Oh god, I want Bloodstained to be good, but this team really isn't making a great name for themselves. If bloodstained turns out bad it will be my first kickstarted game failure.
People seem pretty optimistic about Bloodstained after the backer demo came out. The problems with MN9 likely have more to do with Comcept than Inti Creates. Inti Creates has made good games prior to this, good Mega Man games even. They did the MMZero series, which was pretty good. Some problems here and there, but generally a good example of how to take the formula and evolve it. They also did 9 and 10 along with the the ZX games.
And I am 100% completely the opposite. I've decided that Jeff's opinion about this game are stupid and I'm sick of hearing him rant about it. To say that Bethesda hasn't gotten better is just plain wrong and Fallout 4 is much more stable/playable on a console than any other game released by Todd Howard's studio. I spend 100's of hours on each of their games, much more than Gerstmann, and have had far fewer problems with Fallout 4, period. If he'd just fire up one of their previous games on a PS3 or 360, I'm sure he'd see this.
FO4 is better than 3 on a technical level and some of the gameplay elements are improved, but so much feels that same or worse than 3 in other areas. The dialog system is downright terrible. The animations have not advanced since Oblivion. It's still the same stuff from a decade ago. The writing in the game is still crap. The AI is still so bad at times that I wonder if they're using some of the AI scripting from Morrowind. Even on the PC it looks like a 5+ year old game. For all the places they really did improve on from Fallout 3 (and even from Skyrim) it just doesn't feel like that significant of a jump. If that works for you, awesome, but it's not going to click for everyone.
I think this is the first time I think Dan is the voice of reason... Fallout 4 is exactly what I expected.
But why? Why shouldn't we expect and demand more from Bethesda? There are a lot of great things about Fallout 4, but it is disappointing as well. It just feels like Bethesda has been coasting since FO3. I did not like Oblivion very much and Skyrim was better but it still failed to capture what so grabbed me about Morrowind. I loved Fallout 3, I put over 100 hours into it. FO4 feels a lot like New Vegas for me. By all accounts I should love the game, it's better than 3 in almost every way and yet it can't hold my attention long enough. I thought I wanted just another Fallout 3, but I guess I don't. FO4 really put the final nail in the coffin for me on the Bethesda style RPG. If they actually fix the major issues and get a new engine I'll feel super excited for it again, but as for now I put FO4 down before I even hit hour 10. Valentine is an amazing character though.
Now, when full mod support comes for FO4 I'll probably pick it up again and mess with the crazy radically game changing mods that come out.
I wouldn't say we shouldn't, but it kinda the thing everyone knows will happen. I would be greatly surprised and happy should they change that for the better, but it's still a known quantity that people have grown accustom to knowing will happen. Is it disappointing? Kinda, but not as much as Toy Soldiers was after having a pretty decent game to build off of.
Also to note a new engine would likely mean that there would be even more jank then staying with and upgrading the current engine. The mere thought of "it's just the engine, make a new one and it's fixed" is like saying "we polluted the earth, so we'll just find a new one and not fuck it up." Game engines are a monumental thing that after working with them I'm more than willing to listen to the "that isn't something you fix easily without losing a bunch of stuff or it taking 10 years" than "just fix it." You have to keep in mind that they give NPCs a lot of autonomy to do what they are in the world to do, so that's more than likely to fuck something up along the way in a some way that no one could have foreseen until you had millions of hours played to find that one moment.
As for it feeling a lot like older games I can point you at 10 people that say that was exactly what they wanted, most of which have over 100 hours in FO4 already. I sunk 4 hours in and got the same fatigue I got at the 4 hour mark of Skyrim. Like Call of Duty there are people out there that love that style of game, and it's not for everyone.
So yes it is kinda disappointing that the game is what it is, but I don't believe that my disappointment is a direct relation to the engine and it's jankiness, but rather my irritation with the way they seem content rerolling the same stuff and expected it to carry it a bit further. Good game, but not as good as it should have been.
You're right a new engine won't magically solve anything, but they do need something new. They've been using Gamebryo for over 15 years now (It's hard to pin down exactly when they started using to in Morrowind's development cycle but it seems to be somewhere between 98 and 2000). Compliments where they are due, Bethesda has done an amazing job making the engine work this long and just keeping it updated. The overhaul they gave it for Skyrim has produced less completely broken games, but they still fall far far behind other modern AAA games. I do also realize that there probably is no other engine on the market that could handle everything these games try to do at once without turning out worse. So I'd love to see them put together an engine team and start working on something new, maybe design it for modern PCs and hope that the next generation of consoles are far less disappointing spec wise than this one.
Edit: I am also in full agreement on Toy Soldiers War Chest being more disappointed. I'm a child of the 80s and early 90s. I have a lot of fond memories of GI Joe growing up and I was so looking forward to War Chest. Thankfully Ubisoft is firmly on my "never preorder" list so I didn't let that hype translate into a preorder. I was still very disappointed in it when it came out though, especially with how horribly the PC version ended up.
I think this is the first time I think Dan is the voice of reason... Fallout 4 is exactly what I expected.
But why? Why shouldn't we expect and demand more from Bethesda? There are a lot of great things about Fallout 4, but it is disappointing as well. It just feels like Bethesda has been coasting since FO3. I did not like Oblivion very much and Skyrim was better but it still failed to capture what so grabbed me about Morrowind. I loved Fallout 3, I put over 100 hours into it. FO4 feels a lot like New Vegas for me. By all accounts I should love the game, it's better than 3 in almost every way and yet it can't hold my attention long enough. I thought I wanted just another Fallout 3, but I guess I don't. FO4 really put the final nail in the coffin for me on the Bethesda style RPG. If they actually fix the major issues and get a new engine I'll feel super excited for it again, but as for now I put FO4 down before I even hit hour 10. Valentine is an amazing character though.
Now, when full mod support comes for FO4 I'll probably pick it up again and mess with the crazy radically game changing mods that come out.
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