VincentVendetta

Oh yeah, by the time you're fighting the bad guy from Tekken with mommy issues and an axe, and the giant frog-like farmer in a vacuum, it's become a full-on Japanese game. I will not deny that.

Next thing you know, Zack is gonna walk into an FBI office with a Louisiana accent screaming "WHO DO YOU THINK THAT IS, THERE?!"

Also, I played Deadly Premonition years before finally watching the original Twin Peaks series, and... yeah, Swery took a lot of stuff. Like a lot. Like a loooooooot.

The announcement of Deadly Premonition 2 in today's Nintendo Direct has me filled with conflicting emotions. On one hand, I can't believe this is happening, that we're getting a sequel to the cult classic ten years after the original, and I'm very happy Swery managed to do this.

On the other hand, I feel like Deadly Premonition's position as "Twin Peaks The Game", which was very compelling at release, doesn't have as much charm today. Like, the reason why Deadly Premonition's story was so intriguing is that ten years ago, the idea of David Lynch coming back to release a new season of the cult TV show was impossible. But now that The Return happened, and that Lynch just slammed it out of the park, has the idea of a Twin Peaks rip-off lost its charm.

I should also mention that, while I have yet to play D4, I did play The Missing and... was painfully disappointed. It was a sad proof that having the best intentions doesn't stop you from making the worst decisions.

But hey, I hope, I hope Deadly Premonition 2 is good, I hope it is a step forward for Swery, I hope he finds a way to surprise us all yet again. And what do you think? What is your reaction to such an announcement? Are you excited? Cautious? Are you thinking about getting it? What are your expectations (if you have any) and what do you wish to see improved?

The magic trick finally revealed!

Like Ryan Davis once said: "Really, if you remove any one word from there, it's way better."

I don't know, I'm less exasperated by the fact this is the Monster Hunter than by all the people defending the Monster Hunter franchise as some great piece of fiction. If this ends up being like Predators (bad ass characters ripped from the real world to fight on another world), this could be neat.

And seriously the best video game ever made is Resident Evil: Retribution (#5). It's actually very clever in its stupidity and its use of video game concepts. In fact, I'm watching Afterlife (#4) tonight.

@burncoat: Did you read my post? Such long discussions are not an evolution, they're the same shit; they're the podcast conversations we've listened to again and again, also repackaged another way. And don't think I don't know anything about video essays; I've wasted years of my teenage youth watching them, years I'm never gonna get back. Oh sure they're entertaining, but nothing else, and once you've passed the entry-level and have just a little bit more knowledge on the subjects, they're basically useless. Although I do understand your point of view, as America criticism of all sorts has always been a joke, with only a handfulofexceptions.

And didn't I just take down Waypoint and Polygon for the hilariously bad texts they make? You don't have to make intellectual contortions of cultural studies to have a point of view on gaming! "What the player's view of the world and its inhabitants? How does the game communicates its intent through its gameplay? Does it flesh it out, contradicts it or does nothing with it?" Those are the most basic fucking questions one could even ask about every single action-adventure-shooter-RPG ever made, and we're barely talking about quote-unquote stories. It's not hard science, it's style and context, and even we can't get this shit right. All we can talk about it is "Does it feel good?" which is the most vague mechanical bullshit I've ever heard, and like I said, listening to the Giant Bomb talking about stories (game stories or otherwise) is like pulling teeth.

But I guess that's what happens in a geek culture that desperately wants to be taken seriously through no work of their own. Why bother.

We've yet to talk about the elephant in the room here, which is that video game criticism, as a whole, is pretty terrible. For all their talk about video game reaching "maturity" (whatever that means and whatever that's the case or not), there are still barely any great critical texts written over the years; critical texts that reach the realm of theory. In the whole Giant Bomb crew, there are only two people whose critical pieces I truly respect: Alex and Jeff, and I still don't want to hear anything about their takes of stories. Polygon and Waypoint can try all they want, their juvenile college essays only underline how much work there needs to be done.

This new format doesn't fix anything: it only underlines the problems in video game criticism even further. This is no evolution, it's mere repackaging. It's letting the written review die a slow, terrible death by giving it less and less attention and not giving it the resources, and then, when no one wants it anymore, replacing it with something lacklustre. If you don't have the time to listen to an hour-long discussion on a game (on top of the podcast!), the written text barely scratches the surface; it's the worst of both worlds really. And by themselves, there's nothing wrong with a short critical text - as long as it still has something interesting to say. There's nothing wrong with a round-table discussion, as long as there's already a text to serves as a foundation for the reader/viewer, and that the discussion is made between incredibly intelligent people - oh and that it doesn't waste our time either.

Coming back from my first literature classes in college to this, it felt like a slap in the face. It gave me another reason to hate video games, and I've already got more than enough.

Twin Peaks...

...Oh wait.

Seeing the Montreal Olympic Stadium in a game will never cease to be the funniest shit ever. (that and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, so funny!)