Causality Loops - I Ain't Gotta Explain Shit

One of my favorite things in video games - well, all forms of media, really - is Time Travel because of the non-linear thinking that it necessitates to understand what's going on.  One of the by-products of Time Travel stories is usually something called a Causality Loop, which, coincidentally, is another one of my favorite things in video games and media.  Moreso than Time Travel, but it more or less goes hand in hand with Time Travel because one almost always has to beget the other.  Of course, it's hard to really hammer in this point without really explaining just -what- it is, even though I'm sure we're all familiar with the concept of it, if not the actual definition.

A Causality Loop, in essence, is something that happens because it happened and furthermore must happen, because it happened.  It sounds confusing and it is, but in all actuality, it's very simple because of its concrete foundations in its own existence.  It's the direct inverse of what many call the Time Traveler's Paradox, in which it states that going back in time to prevent something from happening negates the necessity of the Time Traveling in the first place, meaning it would never take place, meaning that it would, again, have to take place.  The resulting is a loop of things that don't happen because something happened that caused it to not happen.  Examples are more or less needed to elucidate the actual concept in motion.

The classic go-to example of the Time Traveler's Paradox is going back in time to eliminate some horrible despot before he comes into a power that will eventually cause the world to spiral into chaos.  Say the team succeeds, the despot is eliminated and the future is destined to change - what does that say of the future in which the time travelers were sent back from?  By all accounts, it doesn't exist anymore because the despot's devastating rule was what necessitated the time traveling to begin with.  Thus, there is no future to time travel back from, thus the time traveling does not occur, thus the despot is not eliminated and, as a result, time refuses to bend or change.  It pretty much only covers willful time traveling, however, which brings us to the other point.

The only example of a Causality Loop that immediately springs to mind that we should -all- probably know about, is the one that Futurama brought to us with the episode "Roswell That Ends Well".  The crew ends up thrown back into the 1940s and Fry runs into a man named Enos, who he recognizes as his grandfather.  His accident-prone grandfather.  Fry attempts several times to prevent Enos from dying because that would unmake him in the future, but his direct interference ends up causing Enos to die anyway, yet Fry still exists.  He comforts Mildred, the girlfriend of Enos and who Fry thought was his grandmother, and the two end up having sex because Fry figures she can't be his grandmother because he still exists.  Well, the end-result is that Fry is his own grandfather and it is hilarious.  This is a proper example of a Causality Loop, however, because Fry exists because he exists.  He ensured his creation by already being created by, seemingly, his own actions which are only possible because he existed.  It's the whole "chicken or the egg" scenario, really.

There are other examples of Casuality Loops out there - at least a couple in Chrono Trigger which I almost got to, but will probably do some other night - and they're all just fun.  Causality Loops are fun to me, in all honesty, otherwise I wouldn't have written about them at all.  I do worry sometimes that people confuse them with paradoxes and, more frustratingly, plot-holes when they're honestly too cool to be either of them!  Paradoxes are easy to make and plot-holes aren't always a big deal (yet you will hear someone yell about them for hours straight for no reason) but it takes -skill- to craft a perfectly executed Causality Loop.  It is an art form and I cannot help but point them out.  Especially since the phrase "Causality Loops - I ain't gotta explain shit" is one of my favorites, even though it is highly situational.

I was going to write about one of the loops in Chrono Trigger but I couldn't figure the words out and it started getting late

Interior Home Design - Animal Crossing: New Leaf Edition

It occurs to me that, for all the talk I've done about Animal Crossing:  New Leaf (and it has been a lot), I haven't really spoken on the other element that's kept me driven and such in the game.  Aside from going all Recettear on my townies and shaping Kupolis directly to my whims, my main goal is to establish a house that looks baller as hell on the inside, making me quite proud to have been the decorator of it.  Or at least, it was the original goal before I discovered the rest, which means I suppose that New Leaf -does- have some rather welcome additions to it since at least the former is new and the latter is fueled by reasons that I never would have gone to such extremes over in previous incarnations.  Still, one of my main goals from early on was to earn the Golden Exterior pieces (which you can see that I got) that I may live and drown in opulence the likes of which my peasant townsfolk will never even have a taste of.

That philosophy is echoed with my main entrance room, I think.  The entire Golden Series basically lives and breathes the mentality of "Allow the chaff to feel envy that threatens to strangle them" and I couldn't love it any more for that if I tried.  The issue with getting the Golden Series furniture, however, is basically the Animal Crossing mantra: "MUST.  BE.  RANDOM."  You get a stone in your town every day that you can break with a shovel that will give you an ore, which obviously has a random chance of being Golden Ore.  You also have a random chance of getting ores from your Money Rock with a Silver Shovel which, of course, all have a chance of being Golden Ores.  For a single piece of Golden Furniture, you need three Ores which you take to the local Refurbishing Fellow Cyrus, who charges you 10,000 Bells for, wait for it....wait for it....a random piece of the Golden Series.  Sigh.

When you're aiming for specific pieces to complete the set (I'm missing the Wallpaper as you might notice) or spares to make your actual design work, it's just a mite frustrating.  Which is why my room is simply not done yet.  So, this is the point in time where I help you visualize just what it's supposed to look like for your own amusement.  The broad strokes are already there, however (which is purposely on my part) so it's not -too- difficult.  The theme for the room is going to be a Throne/Conference room that's just filthy rich and terrible and gaudy and such.  The Throne (which costs 800,000 Bells) would be nice, but it's off-center (which means I would just buy two, honestly), so I went with the Golden Bench since I can quite literally sit in the middle of it and look like a fucking boss.  Two chairs are on either side of the bench, but I want two more, another for each side, to give the illusion of, you know, set meeting spots and such.  If I could set up a table in the middle without blocking off all access to the seats, you bet your ass I would do just that, but alas, it cannot be done.

Additional goals include getting another Golden Screen, getting the Golden Bed and Clock out (probably the bench on the right side as well) and symmetrically setting up the screen on the left-hand side.  An unknown machine (that the community basically refers to as "The button" ala a nuke switch) is behind my right screen and I'd probably just put some sort of music player behind the left so I would -have- music.  As for the entrance and doors, well, I want Golden Women (the Tiki Torch thing on the left side of the door at the bottom of the picture) to line the entrance (two on each side) and Golden Wall torches to go beside each doorway.  Which....is a lot of Golden pieces.  I don't know if I'll actually ever get those pieces.  I'm hedging my bets on "No", which....is what it is, I suppose.  But that is basically what long-term goals are, anyway!  Things that will probably never happen.

On the right of my main room is the room reserved for what the astute might recognize as Christmas time.  A custom design plastered all over the wall and floor as a place-holder and a few winter-y/Christmas-y themed items to get the mood started and it's basically just waiting til December for the Christmas Series (previously known simply as the "Jingle series").  You are all likely well aware of my enjoyment of Christmas stuff by now, since you're probably good readers of my blog here, but if it wasn't blatantly obvious already, then, well, there it is.  I am an absolute whore for Christmas and this goddamn room will be Christmas as fuck when I can actually get that done.  Either when I can touch them and order them through the catalog or, as stated, when December rolls around and I buy them from the Nooklings obsessively.  I don't really know how I'm going to set it up, but it's going to happen.  And it's going to be awesome.

The room on the left is populated with the Astro Series of furniture coupled with the Industrial Wall and Floor because they're far better than the Astro Floor and Wall, especially since I have these all recolored to Red/Black instead of the original Orange/White.  The original intent was just to have a cool space room because space rooms are cool, but, well, the Astro series looks a little goofy.  Luckily, there are assorted Sci-Fi odds and ends that I can spice up the room with, as well as traditional "Lunar" objects like Asteroids, Lunar Rovers and the like.  All told, there will be a lot of machinery and such going on, and it's going to be pretty great looking.  Possibly.  I think I'm going to keep it science-y regardless, since I don't know what else I would do for that room, since I have to split my design ideas between three different houses and that's going to get a bit messy to say the least.

The Basement.....the basement is literally a mess.  I have absolutely no idea what I'm actually going to theme the room on, and I'm basically just shoving shit down there while I figure things out.  I do, however, want you to take note of the Red Box Corner Sofa at the top of the screen that's attached to the normal Green-ish Box Corner Sofa.  That's going to be important for the next room that is slightly out of order because I wanted you to see that piece first.

The Sleek Series room in behind my main room is the room that is more or less 'finished' and I'm pretty happy with the way that it looks.  The sitting area is set up nice for conversation, there's good flow, and it just looks really nice.  The only things that I dislike are the wallpaper and carpet, as you cannot customize those to match the color scheme of the custom furniture, which seems a strange oversight.  The other issue is that I have a completely empty lower right corner, which I debated on just how to fill that.  And I decided, eventually, that the best idea would be to make -more- seating because there just isn't enough, clearly.  The Box Corner Sofa above in the red leather (it's slightly lighter than the sexy red of the Sleek, but still) will be in the corner, and the appropriate Box Sofa pieces, once I acquire one to order multiple will branch off of that for a nice corner sofa for people to theoretically have their own conversation away from the main one.  Because that's neat.  It can't happen in AC, because the max is 4 people at one time, but it's design.

Finally, the second floor room is going to be my Office outfitted with the Rococo Series of furniture.  It's going to be pretty swanky, what with two sofas (where the one is, make a corner facing the back wall), the desk area in the bottom left corner, and some sort of set-up going on with the rest of it.  I'm probably keeping the Modern Tile floor with the Rococo Wall (once I put that up) since the Rococo floor looks kind of dumb.  I think I'm also going to set up the coffee equipment up in this room because what's an office without a way to get some primo coffee for those long nights of doing things?  The Mannequins will be getting the boot, clearly, and the like, so that's a good bit of space which will probably be occupied by the bed.  I basically just have to order the furniture and set it up, which is...the easiest room of all of them since the rest of the rooms, I don't quite have all the stuff just yet, nor the means to get it easily.  With any luck, I'll get stuff sorted quick enough and can do an "After" post as well which will show off all the new bits and layout.  Because, that's....that's the point.

Showing you things now and how they'll end up, that is.

it's pretty weird trying to describe furniture layout in a basic video game design

I Wish Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Hadn't Been Terrible

As it happens, apparently, I've been watching a Let's Play for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (Protip:  Apparently the Youtube App on Vita cares not for Copyright flags) and it has reminded me about the game that I played and Platinum'd so long ago.  The Force Unleashed is one of those games that I had such, such high hopes for despite not really caring much for Star Wars, the lore involved, or having common sense.  Obviously, the game was never going to be good, but we could always hope that it wasn't going to be terrible and depending on how you look at it, it kind of wasn't.  It did some things very well and by and large, those things that it did well were the ones that mattered, but...well, it just wasn't enough.

The Force Unleashed, to me, is basically just another go at the Psi-Ops:  The Mindgate Conspiracy formula, and for anyone who's been here since the beginning, you know that I love me some friggin Psi-Ops.  It's got all the components:  a slip-shod excuse of a story that gives you amazing superpowers, the mentioned amazing superpowers and a wholly inadequate secondary method of attack that the game forces you to rely on more and more as it goes on, effectively killing its own fun by virtue of not understanding that amazing superpowers are why you are playing it.  It's an allusion that I cannot help but make anytime I talk about The Force Unleashed, because it's indelibly true in my brain and absolutely nothing's going to change that.  Because I can back it up with more words!

One of the core mechanics of The Force Unleashed is Force Grip which allows you to pick up objects, people and everything in between and hurl them and/or just manipulate them using your mind the Force.  It is unabashed fun since there's really no science to it - you don't just move things, but rather can throw things at high speeds and they flail about in mid-air until they collide painfully with a wall or another person or the bleak vacuum of space or something flammable which promptly explodes because it's awesome.  While you're holding someone up in the air with your mind the Force, they're more or less at your mercy (some enemies can regain their senses and take shots at you while they're hovering in mid-air) leaving you open to do all sorts of fun stuff like throw your lightsaber through their gut or shock them with Force Lightning.  You cannot set them on fire, however, which is unfortunate.  Now, if you'll allow me to pull a paragraph from the linked post that I assure you has nothing to do with what I just said.

"Yes, the ability to move objects, as well as people, with your mind. Also a hand gesture.  As slightly pictured above, we see Nick holding up one of the soldiers up with his mind and his hand.  (I'll stop that now.)  Of course, the main fun with this power is that you do not simply -move- people and objects, should you desire.  Oh, no no no, what you can do is pick up a soldier on one end of the room and, with a simple flick of the control stick and letting go of the TK button, and launch him at a fellow soldier on the other end of the room.  What you can do, is pick up an explosive barrel and launch it with enough force at a group of soldiers that it breaks every law of physics (as explosive barrels are wont to do) and explodes, leaving them a heap of charred ex-opposition.  What you can do, is rush into a fight and simply throw everything not bolted down at whoever or whatever you wish, destroying everything without firing a single bullet from any of the guns you (needlessly) carry."

-Regarding Telekinesis in Psi-Ops:  The Mindgate Conspiracy (Post here again)

So yes, I realize that I'm just silly and that there are actually -no real comparisons or allusions that one can draw from one game to the next- but allow me my mania, if you will.  Much like Psi-Ops, The Force Unleashed has a secondary combat option (secondary to the Force, that is) which is your lightsaber combat.  And you think "But it's a fucking lightsaber, how is that not the coolest thing ever" and it's very simple.  The reason it's not the coolest thing ever is because it's incredibly clunky and half-done.  Much like the gunplay in Psi-Ops.  The games were very clearly built around the awesome superpowers you're given from the get-go, with the tertiary combat options included for those brief moments when you don't actually have Force/Psychic energy to spam your awesome superpowers.  The lightsaber, contrary to what you've been told, does not cut through everything (I'm imagining a re-imagined The Force Unleashed with REVENGEANCE-style cutting and oh god, my pants) and in fact doesn't cut a whole lot of things!  Also a good grip of the enemies have a lightsaber or equivalent meaning you don't just automatically win because you can theoretically cut them in half like it's no big deal.  Compare that to the amount of enemies that you can reliably send flying at 60 mph with Force Grip for a huge chunk of damage, and you can see why it's less favorable.

So of course, during the middle of the game and through the end of it, several enemies develop resistances to your Force powers because fuck you.  Some troopers absorb your Force Lightning somehow and actually become stronger for it, some troopers just cannot be Force Gripped and so on and so forth.  So you're basically stuck stunning them with the environment and slapping them with lightsaber combos until they die and it's inordinately boring.  I understand that, as a Video Game, they have to pretend that there's a sort of thing as scaling and balance, but on the other hand, you're a fucking Sith.  For half of it.  Then a Jedi for the other half even though you're not really a Jedi until like the last level because of the way the shitty plot is structured and paced.  The point is, you're the equivalent of a force of nature in the game, so trying to throw balance and scaling at you is akin to madness without some appropriate method of doing so.  And sorry but, "Stormtroopers with cool armor" is not appropriate.

Really, all The Force Unleashed had going for it was the insane amount of fun you could have with the Force powers in the earlier levels because you weren't quite as restricted with them.  The ending levels are miles better than the latter levels of Psi-Ops, of course which helps, but at the same time it's not an effective metric to say "well, the ending levels could have been shittier".  It was an immense waste of potential and even though what we got was 'okay', that doesn't excuse the fact that you have possibly one of the most fun caste of mechanics in a game, and your end-product is marred by your insistence against using them properly.  I haven't read up on The Force Unleashed 2 much, but I've heard that it runs along the same lines while somehow having a worse story, which I don't even understand.  (Spoiler:  The Force Unleashed's story basically boils down to "EVERYONE WHO CAN MANIPULATE THE FORCE IS AN ASSHOLE")  I'll get it some day, but I have no doubt that I'll be similarly disappointed with it.

how do you make lightsabers not fun?  seriously

Bonus Post: Animal Crossing: New Leaf - The Culling

Far too long ago I spoke of a simple goal in Animal Crossing:  New Leaf.  That goal was to finally obtain the Golden Axe through which my will would be done I would be able to clear-cut Kupolis and replant the trees in places where I wanted them, where they would make sense, and where they wouldn't be in the way of the damn roads I wanted to put down.  The goal was to be free of the bonds that hold you to doing certain things, to playing a certain way if you want "the good stuff".  With 15 days of "Perfect Status", your time beholden to the City, the ways that it wanted it shaped and the ways that it desired the foliage were finished, but you did not have an effective tool for reshaping until you acquired the Golden Axe.  Which of course required 50 saplings purchased from a store that sells one per day.  While the Golden Axe is not required in concept, it certainly is in execution because it is the only axe that simply will not break, and thus allows you to simply enjoy the arboreal genocide.

A few days ago, the Golden Axe was mine.  I was technically prepared, but I wanted to wait for one last harvest of my trees because I wanted to get enough to replant.  Because that's...half the point.  I don't -want- a flat expanse of nothing, I just don't want trees in the middle of my goddamn roads and in the way of my Public Works projects and such.  So I rested on my laurels (almost literally, ha) and simply awaited the day when fruit would spring from them anew.

That day was today.  As soon as I came across a group of two apple trees and two lemon trees with the respective fruits hanging from their branches, a smirk crossed my lips.  This was it.  This was the moment I waited for.  It was time.

Today was The Culling.

The fruit had to be gathered first.  All in all, I have enough trees that give me anywhere from 1-3 baskets of 9 fruit for all of the different types of fruit (Apples, Pears, Cherries, Peaches, Lemons, Durians, Lychees, Mangoes and Persimmons) not counting my native fruit of Oranges, and the two fruits who only drop in twos, Coconuts and Bananas.  So, harvest day takes a bit of time, especially because fruit doesn't auto-stack and you have a limited inventory space to begin with.  Still, it's something that I do and as a sort of fail-safe with myself to ensure I don't miss trees, (aside from keeping the totals to 9s across the board), I generally stack my fruit baskets up and take a look at them to see if it looks more or less like the last time I did it.

This is...generally what it looks like.  I don't need to have the coconuts and bananas because, as said, they don't all total to 9 and I didn't cut those trees anyway because they're on the beach and I don't even care about the beach, but still.  It's nice to have evidence of the bounty.  Of course, it would have been much more impressive if I had remembered my oranges -before- I took this picture and sold all those instead of after, leaving me to just take a picture of the orange baskets.

Still, that's a lot of oranges.  They sell for a lot less, being the native fruit, but it's still a little bit of bells if you need it and are willing to go through the hassle of shaking them all down, piling them up and whatnot.  Of course, I -did- have the forethought to take out fruit from every basket for replanting purposes.  You simply plant a single fruit and it sprouts into a tree that will bear three whenever it's ready to be harvested which means a nice, steady income of bells since the trees bear fruit every three days, I believe.  Which means for every 9 fruit you collect, if you want to replant, you take out 3.  Because 1 fruit equals 1 tree equals 3 fruit, so 3 fruit equals 3 trees equals 9 fruit.  Nice and simple.

This is basically what that looks like.  Obviously, a good portion of the fruit was cut off on the left side, but it helps to get an impression on just how many fruit trees I had in Kupolis and will have again.  So you can understand why I will have to have them sectioned off in a nice little area all to their own which I can keep handled quite well.  That is the purpose of an orchard, of course.  It's much more convenient and clean than having them scattered about willy-nilly within the town proper so that I have to make a trek about all parts of Kupolis just to harvest it all.  Those days are over.  Those fruit were, of course, basketed up and set aside since there will be an event in the plaza tomorrow, but still, it was effective in showing off the enormity of the situation.

I spoke of my trees as a burden at first, and then as an obstacle.  I spoke of my neighbors and in fact the very core of Animal Crossing: New Leaf as antagonistic.  The nature of Animal Crossing, in both meanings, had become something of a rival to me.  Something to be defeated.  To be conquered.  That I could finally take an axe to the greenery around Kupolis was something to be exalted and savored.  The Culling was to be an epic battle of Man vs. Nature, if you will.  Thus, I present to you the soundtrack of my deforestation.

WHITE

WHALE

HOLY

GRAIL

ca·thar·sis

kəˈTHärsis

noun

noun: catharsis; plural noun: catharses

1.

the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.

synonyms:

emotional release, relief, release, venting; purging, purgation, purification, cleansing; abreaction "the hope was that hypnosis would bring about a catharsis"

138 trees later (give or take a couple) and all was right in the world.  I was left with a few special stumps that will, apparently, attract rare bugs to them that I may catch and present to the Museum for cataloging (and thereafter simply sell to Re-Tail for bells) and they do look neat.

It's hard to note, but the upper right one is a Butterfly stump (I believe) and the lower one is a Heart stump, shown off next to a normal "Bullseye" stump.  All of them can be sat on if....you feel the need to sit on a stump, but aside from the bug thing, that's all they're there for.  The special stumps, I didn't dig up, and I left a few regular stumps as well, but everything else was dug up and the earth returned to normal underneath.  All so I could complete the project that I had striven for for these past weeks.  The one project that I wanted to accomplish first, as it would be phase one of making Kupolis that which I desired.  That which I envisioned.

Roads.  Paths to the houses of my villagers, paths to my house and Dinah's, paths to Re-Tail and the Train Station and the entrance to Main Street.  Roads connected all to one another, taking you anywhere you want to go.  Each tile of road, I placed down manually, conforming my will with that of the very ground of Kupolis itself.  With the hands of my sprite, I have begun to bring civilization to Kupolis.

Phase One is complete.  And how sweet it is.

I might be a little obsessed with Animal Crossing, you guys

On Heroes and Their Portrayals in Games

Mogs note:  There are various spoilers within about several games, each of which has a little heads-up beforehand.

One of the various things that have been rolling around in my head lately is thanks almost solely to the Neverwinter Nights 2 LP I've been reading over the past few nights, which I just finished last night.  Neverwinter Nights 2, for those who are unaware, is a game made by Obsidian using the Forgotten Realms setting of Dungeons and Dragons with all the trappings you expect from an Obsidian game.  It's buggy, flawed and rushed to completion, yes, but it's also intelligent and interesting in the way it goes about several types of things regarding party balance, morality and the story's take on that and more.  At least, in concept and theory it is, since there are all sorts of things that change based on whether your character is Evil or Good, Lawful or Chaotic, Male or Female, but where it falls flat is that even if you're playing a Lawful Evil character (as the LPer did), you're still getting treated as if you're a hero at the end of the game simply because of one bit of plot armor.  So it feels like a game where you -can- be Evil, and the game goes "well isn't that neat", though it expects you to be Good.

Of course, it's not an unfair thing to expect.  In games, when given the option to be Good or Evil, a majority of players swing towards Good for one reason or another.  Sometimes it's simply because we've been conditioned by games that don't offer such choices, sometimes it's because the benefits of being Good simply outweigh those of being Evil, and sometimes it's simply because games don't offer enough potential for Evil to make it truly worth it.  Whatever the reason, players will generally dedicate their first (if not only) playthrough of a game to the 'good' side when one is offered, which leads to things like inFamous:  Second Son making the Good Ending canon "because more people chose it", despite that....not being a very effective barometer for the reasons discussed therein the post under that link.  (With spoilers, be careful)  Everyone just expects the main character to be good because they're the main character, so of course they're going to be good.

That's why I chose to lead this post with a picture of everybody's favorite Badass, Big Boss from several Metal Gear Solid games.  Now, it's been long enough, I think from the original Metal Gear that I don't have to spoiler tag certain things about it, but I did sort of give you a little warning there.  As we all know, Big Boss is the Main Bad Guy™ of Metal Gear, whom Solid Snake eventually defeats and presumably kills.  (And we know it doesn't take and Big Boss is the inevitable Main Bad Guy of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake as well)  The reason this is important, of course, is because with three games that have Metal Gear Solid titles attached to them, we play as Big Boss (or, well, the man as he -becomes- Big Boss) and he is always portrayed as something of a heroic figure, even if the context isn't quite so kind.  What I'm saying, basically, is that he's never been portrayed as the Antagonist just yet, even though we all know he is eventually supposed to get to that point.  I can't even cry retcon as much and as loudly as I want to because the original Metal Gear games were provided with both the Subsistence version of Metal Gear Solid 3, but the recent HD remakes as well, as a clear intention for the player to get to know Big Boss as he will eventually be.

Of course, both halves of the game that we'll colloquially know as Metal Gear Solid 5 (Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes) will feature Big Boss yet again as the protagonist (for most of the games, I suspect, but not all), so maybe we will finally reach that point.  In all honesty, there's no getting around it - Big Boss has to eventually be shown in his fall from his past, his morals and his past ambitions to get to the point where he's at in Metal Gear 1.  Peace Walker (and to a lesser degree, Portable Ops) are a good start when you look at the context over the portrayal (namely the fact that you're kidnapping and brainwashing soldiers to your cause in building up what is eventually known as Outer Haven, with the caveat being that the cause seems noble), but it's not quite there.  I don't need Big Boss to grow a mustache and start twirling the end of it, of course, but there has to be a point where we look at Big Boss and collectively realize that "wow, this is Not a Good Guy™" before he is -finally- the Big Boss that we know him to be.

What's interesting in that realization is that it lead straight to another one for me.  One that does sort of bolster my confidence in the ability of it happening within the confines of Metal Gear Solid 5 somehow.  It's not much of a spoiler to say as much, but over the course of Metal Gear Rising:  REVENGEANCE (For which I have previously mentioned a fan survey suggesting a sequel that can be found on the main Metal Gear Solid website) you come to the realization that Raiden is honestly Not a Good Guy.  It's not even in the vein of something that I can call subtle, and it's only down-played by the fact that you're up against enemies who are pursuing what can be called an actively evil goal.  I do get confused as to who did what now when it comes to the game, but I am -fairly- certain that they more or less maintained a story that Kojima made for the game, even if there were certain changes made to it (such as setting it after MGS4, rather than before it).  Essentially, while it's not subtle and while it's in the confines of over-the-top awesome things, which REVENGEANCE is full of, it does give me confidence that we can be pointed to Main Bad Guy Big Boss over the course of MGS5, which I look forward to quite a bit.

The problem that I have with games in general is that there simply aren't enough games where you are playing someone who is genuinely Not a Good Guy by the end of it.  And even when we do, they're often of...dubious quality (apparently I have never written anything substantial about [Prototype] as I was going to link it here.  Huh.) which more or less defeats the point.  But I'm less interested at this point in games where you play someone who is a bad guy (like [Prototype]) and more interested in a game that actually lets you be the Hero for the whole game until the end where things take a turn and force you off the heroic path for reasons that are...well, understandable.  That in itself is rather difficult to accomplish, because you're dealing with extremes here - Good is Good, Evil is Evil and for the most part, they're generally all set up as things that are absolutes, barring the backstab that most games have to inevitably have.  And not without reason - while good characters do bad things and bad characters do good things, it's always presented as just that, not a redemption or a fall, but a faceted approach.

Honestly, it takes a lot of pacing and a lot of nuance to pull off, so it's no wonder most games don't even dream of attempting it, especially when it's easier and more dramatic to have an asspull Face-Heel Turn that is then conveniently explained away by a few plot points in a very loose interpretation of the events contained therein.  I think that is basically why I can't think of any examples that show off exactly what I want from a game along these lines, because there's not really anything that you -can- list off that fits into the archetypes.  There are a few examples that you guys know I like to throw around about excellent characters because they're Not Good Guys even if it is a bit spoilery.  Caim, from Drakengard, doesn't fit however because even though he is an antagonist in Drakengard 2 (and fucking awesome, and done with taking shit from anybody), honestly -everyone- in Drakengard 2 is an antagonist since the main party is trying to un-make the world (same as Caim) and the people trying to defend the Seals are unrepentant assholes.  And there is the stand-by of Kain from the Legacy of Kain games because the 'Evil Ending' of the first game is canon which sculpts the rest of the series, but Kain, similar to Caim, was never a Hero.  His entire story is revenge and selfishness, so the 'Evil Ending' obviously makes sense because he is Not a Nice Guy.

All I really want is a two-part series (or more, but at least two parts) in which you play as the hero for the first part and play out his fall from grace in a way that is entirely believable, and the second part, you play as someone who has to take him out.  I know this has to exist in some fashion somewhere, but I'm not sure if it's actually in the way that I'm thinking of it.  I also know that there's a lot of games that have a setting where the main villain is a fallen hero, but that doesn't really count because you don't really get to see the villain before he became as such.  You don't get to feel as the hero feels, and you don't get to understand, even if you disagree, with his fall.  And you will likely disagree with the fall, but it will be understandable.  Not something like "The Empire is also evil" or "I was tricked by a witch" or something like that, but just a genuine temptation from evil for something that is obvious and reasonable.  Someday, I will find these games and it will be an awesome day indeed, but until then I fear I'll just have to make do with my lovely anti-heroes which are neat all the same.

Jack the Ripper is still so awesome because REVENGEANGE is so awesome you guys

Bonus Post: Animal Crossing, What Are You Doing to Me?

The screenshot above is one that worries me greatly and with good reason.  You see, I have reached a point in Animal Crossing:  New Leaf where I am almost -free- of some of the most annoying shackles of the game for completionists.  In the world of Animal Crossing exists sets of Silver and Gold tools which, of course, you can only get by performing certain tasks.  Specifically in question here are the Golden Watering Can and the Golden Axe.  The Golden Watering Can requires you to achieve and maintain a "Perfect Town" for 15 days which is honestly more tedious than it is difficult.  The Golden Axe is something you get after you buy 50 Saplings from the plant store, of which they...only sell one a day.  Great.  You might be wondering just how these two things are linked.  It's very simple, really.

The Golden Watering Can really doesn't -matter- in a sense, in that it's more of a symbol, or a trophy if you will.  After you get the Golden Watering Can, there's really no point in keeping your town 'Perfect' anymore if you don't wish to.  Now one of the factors that determines whether your town is perfect or not?  The amount of trees you have.  You start out with so many trees, and you'll inevitably add to them with fruit trees, though perhaps you're not placing them in places that are....good, or where you want them.  So obviously then, you just want to cut them down, but if you do that, then your status drops.  So you tell yourself "I'll just wait until I have a perfect town, then it won't matter what I do" and it won't matter.  It won't matter even the slightest bit.  After you get the Golden Watering Can, it's that much easier to feel that your town is indeed your town to do with what you wish.

So you go buy an axe.  You ready yourself for the tree slaughter.  Perhaps you take down quite a few...and then your axe breaks.  There's only one axe for sale a day, and it's random -when- that day is.  You've started something that you simply cannot finish now, and it's going to drive you crazy.  This, my friends, is why you wait for the Golden Axe, because the Golden Axe does not break.  It cannot.  You can clear-cut your entire damn village if you want and it won't break.  And after that long, is it ever tempting to do just that.  But why would you cut down the trees?  Why would you get rid of a very good source of income?  Why?  Simply put:  Trees are fucking annoying and constantly in the way.

You run around and have to weave and dodge in between trees just to get about and it becomes -tedious-, so you decide to have a set path to go to make it easiest.  Except there are too many trees in the way regardless, so you can't just make a path.  This is why you want to cut them down.  You want to clear them out so you can make a road so you can get around easier.  -Then- you put trees back up somewhere where they're not annoying.  It is -your- town, so -you- make it look like -you- want it to.  The roads above are a testament that I am almost to this point.  I have placed down some roads, indeed some (like myself) would say far too many, but they're not enough.  There are far too many trees still, and I don't have my golden axe yet.  I cannot clear them.  But soon.

Soon.

okay I am kind of creeping myself out

Gaming By The Numbers - The Silly Economics of Animal Crossing: New Leaf

For as much as I have grumbled on and on about Animal Crossing:  New Leaf (even though I had some nice things to say in my review of it) I can't bring myself to say that I don't like the game, even if I can tell you in very many strings of words how I hate a lot of the parts of it individually.  I like Animal Crossing, and I especially like New Leaf because it's the best of the games so far by default.  Though they didn't get a lot of it right, they got more than enough right that even as someone who hates every single villager in his town save two, someone who is so very, very tired of paying off Tom Nook's endless debts, I still play it every day and I still have -fun- with it every day.  Though part of the fun is admittedly in hoping that today will be the day that I finally get a picture from somebody so that I can happily tell them to get the hell out of Kupolis when they talk about moving away.

The other part, however, is the little Shop Simulator they've managed to cram into the game in the form of the Flea Market spaces in Re-Tail, the place where you go to sell the crap you don't want anymore.  Shop Simulator is stretching things a little bit, since basically all that happens is there are eight slots in which you (and other villagers, provided there are empty slots for them, which there will NEVER EVER BE) can put up items that you intend to sell for a price that you get to decide.  Obvious rules apply here - the price has to be somewhere in the realm of reasonable, so if you think you're going to sell a Cushion for 999,999 Bells, you're out of your damn mind and the villagers will tell you as much.  Of course, the issue then becomes -what- is a reasonable price for any given item?

The answer is that it's just complicated because the villagers all actually know exactly what everything costs because the game is cheap and they're cheating assholes.  See, because it's a Flea Market, the actual intent is -not- to make a profit because the items are all used and as such they've depreciated and blah blah blah.  Of course, that's not how things work in Kupolis, because I know the bullshit and things do not depreciate in value in Animal Crossing no matter what anyone says because they're digital and not programmed to degrade as such.  So I fly my Capitalist flag high and make a profit on every damn thing I sell.  The side effect of this is that everything is a bit of a hard sell because it's, well, being sold at a premium so that I make something out of the deal.  It doesn't actually matter what the price -is- so to speak, so much as it matters what the price is in relation to.  For instance, trying to sell a Wooden Box (Retail: 200, suggested sell price: 50) for 300 Bells and trying to sell a Kitchen Sink (Retail: 2,400, suggested sell price: 600) for 3,000 result in the exact same grumbling that they won't have enough bells for their groceries or this or that.  Which is bullshit.

Generally speaking, you will be able to sell something to everyone who walks in (only one at a time, of course, and sometimes they stick around after a purchase to go "OH MAN, I REALLY BOUGHT SOMETHING, IT WAS SO AWESOME", yes yes, get the hell out) though it may take a while.  There's a 'flow' to the sale, so to speak.  A villager will walk in, move about and usually get a sort of surprised expression before rushing up to whatever it is they're looking at to wait for you.  Then they'll go "Oh man, this is pretty good, BUT it's PRETTY EXPENSIVE, I DUNNO" (unless you're just selling things for quarter-retail in which case, pfft, whatever sucker) which gives you the option to tell them "BUY IT ANYWAY" or "Yeah, you don't want it, actually", the latter of which is only good if you are playing on the same cart as someone else and you want to be a gigantic asshole and make sure nobody buys the other persons things.  Telling them to buy it will either lead to them going "You know what, I better treat myself" and buying it, or them saying "NOPE, TOO EXPENSIVE AFTER ALL".  If it's the latter case, you just sort of...nudge them into line-of-sight for another item to repeat the process.  If you do this for every item for sale and nothing gets sold, congratulations, your villager is an asshole and you should look forward to the day they move out.

Ideally, this won't happen because you're probably not going to want to stray -too- far off of the Retail Price since profit is profit.  Because of the randomness in whether or not they'll reliably buy something, it's hard to say what kind of margin to -expect-, but I can tell you that trying for the ideal 100% retail markup is going to end in tears.  Somewhere between 30-50% would likely be acceptable - obviously start at 50% and work down if things aren't selling as fast as you want them to (as in, somebody looks at all your items without buying) and understand that it's random.  As are most things in Animal Crossing:  New Leaf.  So what I'm saying is that, for your 2,400 Retail Kitchen Sink, you'll want to try and sell it from anywhere between 3,120 - 3,600 Bells and you'll likely see a purchase on that.  Easy money and depending on how long you've had the item, it might seem -more- profitable than not since sometimes you just want to get rid of shit, god.  Of course, as long as you're making profit, it's all good no matter what.

Now you might be thinking "Well that all seems like a lot of effort for not a lot of profit" and you are correct, because it's not a lot of profit if you're selling things that you have just bought (or bought previously at Retail price), but that's where a lot of the fun things come in that make the Flea Market seem downright evil like CAPITALIST HEAVEN.  You see, very little of your inventory of items will likely actually come from you handing over retail bells to acquire said item in the first place.  Every day, there are two trees that you can shake to get random items (let it be known that by Items, I mean furniture) for absolutely nothing.  This isn't counting that sometimes your villagers will say "HEY, I feel super generous here, so have this item" or some variation of that, and just hand it over.  Or sometimes they give you a little errand (get this package to this person before the end of the day) which they will hand over something (sometimes clothing which is bad, but usually furniture) for the sweet sweet price of free.

Do you see where I'm coming from?  That Kitchen Sink you shook out of a tree somehow, that sells for 2,400 bells Retail and 3,120 - 3,600 bells via mark-up?  PURE PROFIT.  That Balloon Dresser you shot down from a balloon with a suggested sale price of 670 bells, meaning a retail price of 2,680 bells, meaning a markup of 3,484 - 4,020 bells?  PURE PROFIT.  -Now- you can see how the bells start piling up rather quickly and -now- you can see why the effort is actually worth it.  Because this isn't a profit margin, now, of 720 - 1,200 bells, this is a profit margin of everything you get.  That's not even the sweetest part.  No, no no no, not even close.  Do you want to know what the sweetest part is?  What the absolute best, greatest part of the whole thing is?

When you sell something to someone and they turn around and give it back to you as a gift, free of charge.  Because that means you can put it back up for sale at the same markup and make that profit all over again.

That, my friends, that is a thing of beauty.  And -that- is why I'm still playing Animal Crossing:  New Leaf in a nutshell.

this is why I'm sad that my computer is shit and I can't play Recettear because I would be so good at it

Developers/Publishers Aren't as Smart as You Think They Are

If you pay attention to release announcements, like yesterday's Strider announcement, you tend to see two things that are almost always left out:  Wii U and Vita.  The 3DS misses a lot as well, but that's...kind of a different beast in that the 3DS is likely the weakest machine out there at the moment.  Which isn't a knock against it, it's just that it's fairly impossible to get some games to fit within its confines.  Watch_Dogs, for instance, simply wouldn't go on the device in the same form as it could go on the PS3, the Wii U or anything else.  It's not an unfair statement to make, is my point.  Regardless, that they're -not- on the Wii U or the Vita is always something of an anomaly, given that both platforms can more than likely stomach the game you're trying to hand out, especially if it's on the PS3 and possibly PC, given that it's been said it's an easy port from the former, and I imagine a lot of the PC Indies have found it rather simple to get their game on the Vita, and I've yet to hear of a screaming technical error from any game yet.

Whenever a question is posed, "Why isn't this game on the Wii U/Vita", someone will always (usually in a snarky fashion) state it's "Because those systems don't have anyone buying them."  Okay, so then the question becomes "Why isn't anyone buying them?" (by the way, people are buying them, obviously) and the answer is then, still snarkily, "Because they have no games."  Well, yes, they do have games, but okay, not quite as many as the other systems that have been around for seven years (or almost three for the 3DS), so yes, totally fair.  Totally.  Still, this is a lead-in question as well - "Why do they have no games?"  "Because they don't sell any systems."

Right.

So the way to get a system to sell is for it to already have a fantastic library of games on it already?  Games made for it, I assume is the qualifier, since, you know, the Wii U has the Wii library (of which I'm told has a few gems) and the Vita has a good percentage of the PSP library which has quite a fantastic line-up as well.  Regardless, I'm sure you can all see the logical inconsistency here.  I have faith in you all, you're smart people.

However, the answer to that is that it's simply 'unprofitable', and in today's environment, 'unprofitable' means 'doomed', either in the over-reactive presumptuous way, or the....actual, literal way, which is a fairly sad state of affairs.  That fault lies nowhere but on the developers and publishers for creating the environment to begin with.  We didn't force them to make grandiose teams of developers to work on possibly out-of-this-world-great games or potential over-polished garbage (or, hell, even under-polished garbage as we have seen), certainly.  We assisted in fostering it by buying the games, one could argue, but what are we going to do, not buy games because their developers/publishers were fiscally irresponsible in making them?  Of course not because that's silly.

The harsh truth is simply that you're going to have to eat a loss at some point.  Sorry, but that's just the truth of it.  You have to get games onto a platform to inspire purchases of it so you can put more games on it and eventually recoup from not only late purchases of that original game, but people who have finally picked up the console for the games who are grabbing yours up.  That's simply how it works.  Don't pretend the PS4 and the XBone are anomalies in this, considering the success both consoles seem to be having not only in pre-orders, but game announcements.  Think back on the announced lists and try to present a game that's 1.) Third-Party and 2.) Not also coming out for PS3/360 as a fall-back, ensuring that the PS4/XBone version is just an up-port.  Or perhaps a lateral port of the PC version.  I mean, go ahead, I'll wait, I'm pretty sure you're not going to find a lot.  (I'm gonna cut you off and go out on a limb here and suggest that Sunset Overdrive is a Second-Party thing, like Resistance for Sony has been.)

So it's not even as if they're giving the PS4/XBone 'proper' focus, either.  It's going to be up/side ports for a long time while Sony and Microsoft struggle to keep their First and Second parties making the system enticing enough for you to deem it worthy of a purchase if you're not sold on it already.  Neither of them will have very much trouble in this, of course - Sony has been working very hard at making the PS4 attractive from every angle and have succeeded almost uniformly, while Microsoft has gained back a lot of goodwill from the 180, specifically from the people who went "Well, I -want- Halo, but I don't want bullshit" since said bullshit is (possibly) gone.  The mandatory Kinect isn't near enough of a deal-breaker for most people (unless its requirement requires some funky layouts and/or won't allow a person to simply turn it around to keep the camera off of them, as they'd rather not deal with it) and you simply cannot fault Sony for much at this point, in terms of the PS4 itself.

Still, this is playing both sides of the fence, and eventually somebody is going to lose out on that end.  You're going to need other sources of revenue than the Large McHuge Super-AAA havens that people make the PS4/XBone out to be (as they made the PS3/360 out to be) and the time to get in on this is now.  Or rather, it was half a year ago at least, but you can still get in on it.  You especially want to jump in on Vita development, since the parity between the PS4 and the Vita is going to put the device in a lot of hands, and if it's there, people will buy your games.  Nintendo is probably going to get their act together on displaying the Wii U as a device that you want for reasons as well (if we know Nintendo, part of it'll likely be a price cut right around November to 'devalue' the PS4/XBone out of the gate), and to continue to ignore them isn't going to do you any favors.  People -will- play non-Nintendo First-Party games on a Wii U if you give them to us, it's just in your court to make that leap.  Since you're just hurting yourselves by not making the effort everywhere you could be focusing.

the cyclical bullshit is just so damn annoying

Pokemon X/Y and Insanity

Citing various sources, including a fantastic video game, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and over again and expecting things to turn out different.  This is basically me with Pokemon.  We all know of the Sonic Cycle which is a true thing that happened in times of yore, and essentially, I have my own Pokemon cycle.  Basically I hear of a new Pokemon game and I hope against all hope that this one, this is going to be the different one.  The one that really innovates the series rather than giving us a new area, new pokemon, a few mechanics tweaks and maybe a new type or two which are, by and large, generally more trouble than they're worth.  The one that breaks the conventions of old and ushers in a -new- style of Pokemon game, one that is approachable to both new and old players while also catering to them both, retaining familiarity to draw in and keep new fans, while changing things up to excite veteran ones.  I keep this hope alive while I await new bits of news to come out.

And then they announce what the new "Team" is.

And I sigh and resign myself to buying what is essentially Pokemon Ruby for the nth time.  A band of adults running around in some megalomaniacal scheme that inevitably involves some form of Pokemon God that still hasn't been discovered on the grand scale despite it literally being a God and thus something other regions would know of, only to be thwarted by you, a precocious tweenager that's always given their first Pokemon by some Professor that is inevitably Grass, Fire or Water type.  Cut it, print it, gold.

I have made many, many posts about Pokemon and the bulk of them are not celebrating what it is, but rather lamenting that it could be better.  This seems like it is something that is never going to stop happening unless I stop caring about Pokemon entirely, which I don't think is something I'm capable of doing while there is not a proper replacement abound.  I just can't -not- envision a game that is like Pokemon but is also so much -more- than what Nintendo and/or Game Freak restrain the titles to be.  I've said it before that I understand that every Pokemon game is designed with the idea in mind that it's going to be -somebody's- first Pokemon game, but that doesn't excuse anything.  Pokemon Gold/Silver was somebody's first Pokemon game as well, and that has, in many ways, still managed to blow even the newer games away with its scope if nothing else.

Pokemon games can have natural conflict, natural progression without a cartoonishly inept and evil group of malefactors running around and shouting about how bad they're being or being so deluded that it boggles the mind as to how they've avoided the sanitorium.  Indeed, the "Teams" are truly my biggest pet peeve with the entire series since they don't even make sense anymore - they simply exist to exist because they've always existed.  They are basically causality loops of the Pokemon Meta-verse, except nowhere near as complex, yet exactly as illogical.  I imagine it's crazy to think they will ever -not- be there because they have, in fact, -always- been there, apparently.  Perhaps it's some sort of meta-commentary on society when every single area of a given world has the exact same scenario occurring in it at what could or could not be the exact same time.  Or...no, probably not.

All I want, which is appropriate enough for the series, is some form of proper evolution.  I've come up with all sorts of ideas for this which have been the subject of many, many posts before today, which I won't even look for since you have the Pokemon tag link above, but I understand that some of them may just beyond the scope for a short-term change.  Not everything can be out of that scope and an idea comes to mind that takes advantage of mechanics that have already existed and been used in the games that can also mirror....well, every single piece of media surrounding the Pokemon series as a whole.  I understand it's not the easiest thing to implement in the fashion that I imagine it in, but it would be easier than other ideas that would also enrich the game.

Double and even Triple team battles have been a thing in the games so far, and there are even portions of some of the games where you have a partner that follows you around specifically for Double-Battles.  So...why not extend that to the whole game?  In addition to your team of Pokemon, just make it so that some of the characters in the game are 'recruitable' in that you can buddy up with them and travel the region alongside them, with the option of bringing them in on Double-Battles if you so choose.  Have it be so that you can influence their own team, whether or not they evolve their mons, stuff like that.  Just add another layer of depth to the game that can also be completely neglected if you wish, since you wouldn't -have- to recruit any of these characters.  I just think it would be interesting to have a 'friend' mechanic in the game so that your character would have, by extension, a bit more of a personality, or even just a bit of more 'ownership' from you, the player.  "My character is always friends with (Character) and is a dick because he keeps telling them not to evolve their (Mon)." or "My character goes around and makes friends with everyone, making sure they're on the road to having the best mons they can before parting ways."  Just something.

Just like every other time, I can only say that this is -not- the Pokemon game that I want.  I want something that expands beyond the boundaries that have been in place for damn near two decades.  Or, more appropriately, the ones that have been in place since Ruby and Sapphire, some 11 years ago.  The game can be so much more, but Game Freak has to try it.  Much like every other time, I will hold out hope that the next game, the next Pokemon iteration, will be the one that I want.  And, to complete the cycle, it just won't be, yet I'll buy it anyway, because it's the only Pokemon fix that I -have-.  Which I can only imagine is the only reason for why Game Freak and Nintendo aren't pushing anything - if you want your Pokemon fix, you have only one place to go.  Maybe when someone finally makes a capable clone, we'll see a shift, but I don't foresee that happening anytime soon.  I can damn well hope for something like that on the Vita, however.  I can hope very hard.

Of course if a Pokemon-like series showed up on the Vita, it wouldn't be 'competition' it would just be called a 'rip-off' and I will just get so angry about that

New Nintendo IP in the Making

I have been complaining for a long, long time that Nintendo seriously needs to reinvigorate its approach to IPs.  The first part of that mostly relies on...making new ones, which Nintendo -has- been doing, obviously, but not on the correct scale and not with the correct weight, is what the problem is.  Which is why, upon hearing the news that Shigeru Miyamoto is busy with a new IP, I'm not immediately jumping with joy.  Yes, it's good that they are working on a new IP, but once upon a time, Nintendogs was a new IP as well, one that Miyamoto personally came up with.  Still, Miyamoto works directly on a lot of games, which is definitely admirable, so his involvement isn't surprising or really different in a sense, nor is it any sort of indication of.....well, anything really.

Which is why I'm not focusing on that aspect, but rather the new IP part of it, since that's what's especially important here.  I'm fully aware that Nintendo has -made- new IPs in previous years.  I'm fully aware that Steel Diver, Xenoblade Chronicles and Pushmo were all new IPs in recent memory.  I'm also pretty sure that those are all of Nintendo's new IPs from recent memory, at least the first-party ones which is honestly what I have to stress the most out of everything that I say.  Second-party IPs are full of muddiness, because of the range of possibilities from whence it came and where it can go in all honesty.  You never know which IPs were born with a developer and then 'bought' by one of the big three to make it happen, which were simply loaned out to an outside developer because their internal studios were too busy and all of the other possibilities that exist.  Second-Party efforts are always, always going to be -close- to First-Party ones, but almost never are they quite there.

Of course, it's not even just about making the IP, but trying to establish it, which is a different beast altogether and one that Nintendo hasn't mastered since the days of yore when Pikmin and Animal Crossing were new and exciting.  They're getting better, of course, because Xenoblade Chronicles is -almost- a good example, given that they're clearly intent on keeping it as a continued thing with a sequel in the works for the Wii U.  The issue I take with it is the lack of faith and follow-up Nintendo had in the title to begin with.  It was one of the three Project Rainfall titles that were almost assuredly not going to see a western release (all three titles ended up getting one) and even when it -was- brought over, there was an incredibly small print-run of it.  Which is...understandable, yes.  Nintendo was wary about its success, or rather its ability to be one, and yet it definitely was a success in all facets.  The problem is that Nintendo...didn't really re-print it.  If they did, they didn't re-print enough of them, because the game reached rare status which should never, ever, ever happen with a First-Party title for any reason whatsoever.

Regardless, that's all negative stuff and we should move away from it far sooner than I managed to.  The question at play here has to be "What kind of game is going to come of this new IP"?  It's a blank slate thematically and realistically.  Genre, setting, characters, all of it is up in the air and it's something that we'll never be able to guess at before it's officially unveiled (likely next year, during E3 Nintendo Directs unless they do a proper presser next year) and that is definitely alluring.  We can analyze what genres Nintendo are filling already and sort of try to go from there, but it's all guesswork.  And if it's all guesswork anyway, why can't we just go full-bore with guessing?  Stop caring about what's there already and try to imagine a scenario with a Nintendo coat of paint.

Personally, I want to see Nintendo take on something a little more modern, a little urban.  Nintendo games, at least what they're known for, tend to be fantastical adventure titles in sparsely populated countrysides and it's always nice and cheery and whatnot, but I'm confident they could do something with it.  After all, Earthbound as a series were all games set in a decidedly modern-day setting and fans swear by those.  Of course, we only technically have the one example of three (in an official sense), but still.  I know Nintendo will want to do light-hearted stuff like....well, usual, but there's still plenty of light-hearted things you can do with a  modern, urban setting regardless.  I think my dream game out of this kind of scenario would be an action/adventure affair with light simulation aspects that are carried out through your in-game smartphone/tablet which are, of course, presented ala your Wii U tablet.  Certainly gives a good reason to use the thing and in an intuitive way, which I believe is what Nintendo worries about in actually implementing uses for it.

The other idea in my head is a little more focused, though it's honestly something I could see Nintendo running with.  Once again, it's sort of built-around the tablet, but it's closer to Nintendo's 'comfort zone' in that it offers plenty of room for fantastical adventure and magic and charm and such.  What it ends up being, really, is sort of Nintendo's take on Sorcery in which your apprentice uses spells out of a spellbook rather than a wand.  I understand that it seems a little off-putting at first, the thought of looking down to see a spell before you look back up and cast it, but done right, I think it could really be enjoyable.  If there's anyone I trust with such a task...well, Nintendo's not at the -top- of that list, but they're on it, I assure you.  I just think it would be an interesting mechanic, and Nintendo assuredly wants to put the Tablet out there and see it used in ways that actively enhance or work with the games on the system, rather than the purely peripheral uses it's been seeing so far.  Of course, that does cut out the chance for Remote Play of this game (and the previous suggested), but what's cooler - being able to play a game ten feet away from your console while the TV is doing something else, or being able to play a game that's fully connected and integrated with the giant pad with a screen in your hands?  Personally, I think the latter.

Whatever the new IP is gonna be, there are at least two things it -has- to be.  Namely, it -has- to be a Wii U game (which just seems obvious) and it -has- to be something big that they're willing to push and make a series out of.  One-offs won't do them many favors at the moment or in the future.  Remember, it's not a problem that Nintendo keeps making Mario, Zelda and Pokemon, it's only a problem that it's all they seem to be making.  Yes, we want those games, but we want new things too, not just new mechanics, new coats of paint for the 25-year-old franchises.  Like I've said before, Xenoblade Chronicles is a step in the right direction, so let's hope they keep up that momentum and start really swinging for the fences.

swinging for the fences also includes re-printing Xenoblade Chronicles btw, come on make it happen

E3: The Grades

It's kind of a hack thing to do, or at least reeks of self-importance, to actually give 'grades' for E3 showings and the like, which makes me not want to do it.  But at the same time, I'm not being super-duper serious about it, so you can basically take whatever I say, run it through the Whose Line Is It Anyway? points system, and you basically have exactly what my grades are worth.  (Hint:  The worth is zero)  I mean, it's not like I'm going to be -super- silly about it, but definitely not going to sit here and pore over everything to get a completely and totally 'informed' opinion and also try and be objective about it.  Because, obviously, I -can't- be objective about it.  So having fun with it is the next best choice.

Microsoft

Microsoft went into E3 with a -lot- of things being expected of them.  Expectations of explanations regarding their still-confusing and Draconian-sounding DRM schemes that are hard-built into the console itself.  Expectations of explanations regarding their equally-confusing -not- Draconian-sounding "Family Sharing" ideas that are apparently a thing but have yet to be explained in a way that allows you to see the catch, leaving them simply as things that seem to defeat the entire purpose of the Draconian DRM.  Expectations of a clear, concise message about any one thing.  Expectations of a lot of games to be shown.

And, well....we got games, at least.

Unfortunately, it's not quite as easy as just saying "They had a bunch of games and they were all awesome and it was great!" because, well, that's just lying.  There -were- a lot of games and while some of them were technically impressive, most of them...well, weren't.  Killer Instinct's revival was quickly mired with the double-tap of news that it's free-to-play with just one fighter where others are purchased and it's being developed by Double Helix Games who have...a less-than-impressive catalog of projects.  Dead Rising 3 eschews the campy B-movie quality of the previous games in lieu of a....*sigh*  'gritty', heavier experience that will be published by Microsoft Game Studios, meaning a multi-platform port is at least a year off of release.  Ryse:  Son of Rome has QTEs for the sake of having QTEs, I suppose, because they complete themselves with incorrect inputs, leading some to think they're just for bonuses or something.  And Project Spark, pretty much the -only- game I really care about, is pretty much LittleBigPlanet, only done with what appears to be the Fable engine.  (Seriously, does that not look like Fable?)  (Seriously the second, "Build, Play, Share?  Really?)

Titanfall is something that I am told is awesome but I haven't quite checked it out for myself yet.  However, I will err on the side of calling it awesome.

Grade:  D+.  Microsoft brought the focus on games in a big way, which is appreciated, but that's pretty much all they did.  Showing MGSV on stage gets you points regardless of anything, and I am all for cribbing ideas and running with them as Project Spark is doing, but I'm not too optimistic on the execution - especially since I will never, ever play it.  Their continued insistence against explaining anything coherently was pre-cemented by cancelling all their E3 meetings beforehand, meaning the only things we -did- get were along the lines of the rather unfortunate PR disasters that Microsoft employees seem to be tripping over themselves to perform lately.  In the end, even though they brought the games, nobody really walked away happy except for the diehards, and those people would be happy if the XBone kicked you in the nuts every hour on the hour.

Sony

Where moods were dire for Microsoft's entrance into E3 because of what we knew, outlooks were similarly bleak for Sony's conference for the most part, with only a few spots of hope here and there.  "Well if Microsoft is being super restrictive with their console, it's obvious that Sony is going to go the same route!," was the cry from the rooftops.  There was an abject refusal to believe that Sony's device would be any less restrictive from the consumer stand-point than Microsoft's on a widespread basis, because nobody could see a reason why it would be on Microsoft's device and not Sony's.  Well, mostly nobody.  Yet even those of us that chose to believe there was some sense left alive in the industry were hard-pressed to assume that Sony would come out and absolutely kick in Microsoft's teeth from a PR stand-point.

So, really, all of us were wrong about something where it concerned Sony.

The absurdity of the night has started to sink in for all of us in the passing days, of Sony getting deafening cheers and applause for simply saying "Yeah, the PS4 is going to work like the PS3 today in terms of used gaming and game lending and internet requirements", but the onus is on Microsoft for calling all of that into question in the first place.  Despite the absurdity of it, Sony's stance on gaming is nonetheless a victory for us all, even with the proponents of a "Digital Future" and the few Microsoft supporters stating that the XBone is simply a generation too soon.  In no uncertain terms, we are not on the precipice of this digital future nor are we a generation away from it, because global infrastructure is simply not there.  Nor is it close.  We are not to the point as a -people- on a worldwide scale where the internet is a provision or a right.  To suggest otherwise is foolish, and to acknowledge that the games industry, like most industries, is a worldwide on makes it that much more obvious.

That's more of a topic for another night, however.

As for Sony's games showing, well, it's something of a hard thing to pin down.  It's easy to overlook in a sense, but Sony bringing up a score of Indie Developers to show off an impressive list of Indie games that will be playable on the PS4 (continuing the absurdly strong relationship that's been heavily emergent in the last few months) easily adds enough games to the list to suggest that maybe they did, in fact, show off the most games at E3.  Perhaps it's because these Indie Games are known quantities at this point, it's easy to overlook them, or perhaps it's something else, but no less than eight Indie Games were featured on-stage on top of the other games shown, while I'm willing to bet a number of them are going to go PC/Playstation-only as well.

If your call for games actually means "New games that we haven't seen before" then Sony's list comprises only four titles:  The Order:  1886 which is a new IP, Mad Max which is a single-player multi-platform offering from Avalanche Games set in the universe of Mad Max with little to no relation to the movies, Final Fantasy XV (Which is actually Final Fantasy Versus XIII rebranded) and Kingdom Hearts 3.  However, I don't think you can be disappointed with the content of that list, even if you're disappointed with the length of it.  Because it's perfectly valid to be disappointed with the length of the list - I am.  I'm disappointed specifically because there's nothing Vita-related on the list.  The Walking Dead Season One with 400 Days DLC doesn't count, to me, even though I'm going to buy the ever-loving shit out of it.  I expected, I wanted something, even if it was just a new Uncharted, or, dare I even speak of it, another portable iteration of God of War (beyond the ports of the first two games in HD) and we didn't even get that much.

It's...disappointing.  I would imagine TGS is the place for the Vita by and large anyway, but now all my expectations fall squarely on that event.  Yet from that, I don't expect Uncharted or God of War of course (though Uncharted -was- shown off during the initial Japanese reveal of the Vita ways ways back) but rather Gravity Rush 2, the inevitable port of Monster Hunter 4, Dragon's Dogma Quest, Phantasy Star Online 2 and dare I dream of Final Fantasy Type-0 Vita.  Japanese games for a Japanese event, of course, which leaves me wondering where Western games -can- be announced aside from...simply announcing them.  Which is a viable enough option, of course, and if an inFamous title for the Vita were announced tomorrow from official channels only, I wouldn't give a shit about that fact, but the fact that finally, an inFamous game on Vita.  Still, in comparison to the huge relief for the PS4, my mis-givings really aren't that big, and ensured I walked away from Sony's E3 with an entirely positive mindset, as did most.

Grade:  A-.  The combination of a $100 system undercut preceded by a merciless beatdown of Microsoft's over-the-line XBone policies ensures that this E3 will be the latest E3 that we always, always talk about.  They didn't slouch in showing off games, certainly, though they didn't have many reveals which is, of course a bit unfortunate, but in the grand scheme it's not really a mark against them.  I'm personally bummed by the lack of presence of the Vita in the presser, but I can understand it in a sense.  At the end of the day, though, Sony gave us not only a presser that was memorable on its own merits and because it had a clear, concise message to it, but also a presser that was memorable because it needs to be.  Standing against ludicrous digital policies while not eschewing the digital marketplace wholesale is important for growth as is continued acceptance of the physical marketplace with the knowledge that we simply are not ready to not have that option.

Nintendo

Nintendo's strange idea to completely eschew a normal presser event at E3 in favor of little Nintendo Direct-like events certainly raised a few eyebrows, and everyone had their own reason for believing why Nintendo did it.  Some simply saw it as a way to cut the 'fat', so to speak - keep the press stuff to press events and give the gamers the games so to speak.  Others expected a little something....more.  Something as a more tangible reason for doing so.  Needless to say, the latter camp was in for a bit of disappointment, since all Nintendo really brought were games, which isn't bad in of itself, but the games were ones that....were not surprising in the least.  I admit, perhaps it's a bit silly to say that Sony had four reveals but that's not a problem, versus Nintendo's three that -are- a problem, and it may have a smidgen of bias inherently, but I'll try to explain what the difference is from my point of view.

Who saw Sony announcing/revealing a Victorian-era steampunk game about hunting werewolves in London?  Anyone?  Nobody?  Okay.  Who saw Nintendo announcing/revealing a new Mario game, a new Yoshi game and a new Donkey Kong game?  Everybody?  Okay, the guy in the back honestly didn't expect another Donkey Kong and that whole row didn't expect a new Yoshi game, but the level of surprise is much, much lower.  It's something of a strange position to be in because nobody dislikes Zelda, Mario, Pokemon or any of the other first-party games, and there's not necessarily a 'fatigue' setting in (as some people say for, like, yearly franchises or what-have-you), but there's a whole combination of reasons that set people to be disappointed when Nintendo makes games using the same stable of characters again and again.

The easiest way I can explain it is basically this:  What Nintendo is doing is like if Naughty Dog were still making Crash Bandicoot games today.  Would today's Crash Bandicoot games be awesome?  Probably!  Am I suggesting that Nintendo's series should have been left back at the NES or SNES days?  Of course not.  There's just....a middle-ground approach.  You can't build a console specifically around old characters with new ideas, despite Nintendo's success at doing just that (though, it's not doing a whole lot for the Wii U at the moment).  You have to introduce actual, physical new things through your first-parties and have the intention of running with them.  To my knowledge, Xenoblade Chronicles and Pushmo are the only -real- examples of this at the moment (both first-party, both with sequels out or on the way) but Xenoblade Chronicles is -just barely- because of that stupidly tiny printing Nintendo made.

Leverage this against Sony's PS3 First-Party efforts which have brought us inFamous, Uncharted, The Last of Us, LittleBigPlanet (started as second-party, is now first), MAG and Starhawk (among others) as new to compliment the returning God of War, Sly Cooper, Killzone, MotorStorm and Gran Turismo games.  The old and the new work off of one another and add a little bit of spice to everything, so to speak.  If Nintendo would just have a couple of their studios -not- make a Zelda game, -not- make a Donkey Kong game, but instead make a new series that they could, you know, -then- make between the others, we'd all be much, much happier with them.  So it's pretty much for that reason why we have a Nintendo offering that has a -lot- of first-party games....yet reactions are so mixed.

Still, from Nintendo's presentations, we got a name for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 2 as it's now formally called The Legend of Zelda:  A Link Between Worlds, announcements of New Yoshi's Island, Super Mario 3D World and Donkey Kong Country:  Tropical Freeze alongside footage of  Pikmin 3, Mario & Luigi:  Dream Team, Super Smash Bros. (the new one), New Super Luigi U, Xenoblade's Sequel, Mario Kart 8, The Legend of Zelda:  Wind Waker HD, Bayonetta 2 and The Wonderful 101.  Which is, of course, not -bad- by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm personally hoping Xenoblade Chronicles getting a sequel means the rest of us will be able to play Xenoblade Chronicles for less than $100 Used in the future, but I admit that may be a bit optimistic.  And we got all that without the blather and without the filler of a presser (I think, at least), so, hey, bonus points right there.

Grade:  B-.  I want to be harsher on Nintendo, but I cannot, nor will I fault them for showing games, even if the games aren't exactly the ones I (or others) want.  Except Bayonetta 2.  I want that.  I haven't even played Bayonetta 1 yet (Yes, Chance, I know) but I want to be all over that.  And Xenoblade sequel, but I want to friggin' be able to play the original first in -some- fashion.  I can only hope that Nintendo has something of an epiphany with the Wii U's potential in the near future and springs up a few new series that fans can complain about having too many iterations of twenty years from now.  Or even just goes weird with something like the rumored StarTropics revival that was apparently false  Just do -something- to shake things up a little.

Squeenix gets an F-- for failing to show Drakengard 3 and Type-0 Vita