Yelix

@hippie_genocide: FYI, she currently runs a site that almost exclusively runs content about games she thinks are cool. Not exactly mean or hateful.

Anyway, yeah, this book seems kind of dumb. However, it seems like there are some decent points buried under a bunch of bad stuff. I've spent most of my life almost exclusively playing console AAA games and I will agree that a great many of them are very stupid. God of War feels like it was written by a 12-year-old. Far Cry 4's story barely made sense and each new character was more insufferable than the last. Bioshock Infinite makes you kill a bunch of black people fighting for their freedom so it can deliver a half-assed false equivalence about how power corrupts people. The Last of Us is just The Road: The Video Game (though Left Behind was terrific).

But, as you said, the way he states in the preface that he won't talk about foreign games or indie games almost defeats his whole point. He could use those sectors to support himself, but he doesn't want to do the research. Japanese AAA games often fall into the same holes as Western ones. Also, some indie games are heavily inspired by AAA, bringing both good and bad elements over. If he had bothered with those topics at all, he may have been onto something.

It's an elaborate, stupid justification for Kojima to put a prominent pair of boobs in his game. It would have been more honest and slightly more respectable for him to just say "I put the hot lady in the game because I like titys" because that's the ACTUAL backstory for Quiet.

There's nothing wrong with a character being "sexy," but there are better ways to do it. EVA walked around with her shirt unbuttoned because she was pulling a long con on Big Boss for the entire game. Quiet walks around in a bra and doing "sexy" poses in the ACC just because Kojima likes looking at that.

This review (like the game) is friggin' delightful. The idea that Austin should "just talk about the game" is nonsense, y'all. The game fits into a growing trend in the industry, so he related it to that. The game is unique in the ways in which it relates to his life, so he talked about that. He did nothing but talk about the game in this review.

Oh gross. I've never read RP1 but it sounds like hell.

I'm fucking terrible at Rocket League. I would love to do this.

There are inklings of decent threads to pull throughout his piece but he seems unwilling to tug on the right ones. "All violence is inherently bad" is way too simplistic, of course, even if I think the mainstream games industry would do well to occasionally take different approaches to design.

The point about the lack of market viability for nonviolent games is interesting, though. Also, though I generally like to shy away from tone-policing, Samyn needs to realize that condescension from a place of perceived moral superiority won't sit well with most people.

Fast movement, slow projectiles, ripping guitar, and the devil.

@cagliostro88: That's fine! I'm saying the "that's just how things were!" argument comes up anytime there's criticism of any fantasy setting, and I think that's ridiculous.

I can't comment on this particular game as I haven't played it, but I do think the "historical accuracy" argument doesn't work with fantasy worlds. Yes, there may have been exceptionally poor treatment of women and a lack of people of color in medieval Europe, but fantasy games such as The Witcher 3 don't take place in medieval Europe or any other real-world setting. Again, I'm not sure what specific issues this game has (or doesn't have), but dismissing criticism with "that's just how it was!" it pretty silly when we're talking about a made up fantasy world.

Whaaaa?! Awesome!