Games are important, but they are merely an excuse to declare in this site and to my friends my nostalgic and nihilistic look towards things.

• 21May 13

  A big moment!

  

  I never thought I would live this moment! Pardon my enthusiasm, but this is my best record as a player. From the late 80's until now. 10 stars rank in Silent Hill 2. A personal triumph of hard work and determination that I achieved after a very big effort. By playing the game repeatedly for the last 15 days, it grew inside me little by little the idea of going for the 10 stars, and the last three days I started testing my performance, to see if I had any chances. I soon realized that the only way to succeed in that was to learn  the game by heart: every building, every turn in the street, every locked door, the starting positions of the enemies, their attack pattern, the exact locations of items...memorize everything. I already remembered all these more or less, but now I had to picture the whole game in my mind like a photograph, make very few mistakes and in a fast tempo. So basically it was a test of memory and concentration.  But today I realized the true difficulty of the challenge: it required to have nerves of steel. You had to get used to the idea of being good at it, to have been greatly improved and at the end get a slap in the face as a reward. Fail countless of times and start all over again. Essentially a mind game. And with external factors of difficulty too: Glitches that could terminate the game at any time, the cat stepping on the eject disk button of the console, and worst of all: phone sellers that they have discovered my cover, they know that I'm at home and insist calling every hour until I break and I answer the call.

  For some people the 10 stars in SH2 and all these nerdy situations probably sound funny, without any real value and surely a waste of time and energy. But for me it has big importance, because I did something that I thought it was impossible. It was for the others, the skilled ones and surely not for me, the average player. At the end of the day that's why I love video games: besides being incredibly fun, they teach you that you need to overcome yourself if you want to win. And when you have done that, you have to start all over, because getting better and better just isn't good enough.

  • Posted May 21, 2013 4:50 pm GMT
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• 11May 13

  Watching a classic being abused: Silent Hill 2

  If by reading the title above some of you thought that this will be a blog about bashing the Silent Hill HD Collection, you are mistaken. Actually I'm rather going to side with Konami on this matter. Indifference is one thing, abuse, or molest is another.

  Recently I finished my ambitious project to post a complete video playthrough of Silent Hill 2 on YouTube. My goal was to achieve good performance (always for my standards), and I saw it both as a challenge for my skills and as my personal tribute to the makers of this classic game. My motivation is perhaps suspicious, maybe I acted out of vanity. I'm okay with that. I wanted to do it anyway.

  After I finished my own work, I started searching inside the site's domain to watch other people's similar playthroughs/walkthoughs of Silent Hill 2 and see how I did compared to them. The results of this query were shocking: As a general rule most of Silent Hill 2 walkthoughs are either works of amateurs at best (usually those were left incomplete), or even worse, walkthoughs made by incompetent players that performed badly without the slightest effort to learn the game's ways, almost on purpose one could say, just to ridicule the game's outdated controls and mechanics.

  I will show to you three examples of how the big majority of YouTube users understands the meaning of a Silent Hill 2 walkthrough video, and their overall level of appreciation of Konami's game.

  Example 1. A guy from Sweden with the user name: Pie Die Pew. His videos have his face in a small corner of the screen, so you can actually see the game-play and at the same time the face whose playing it. It's interesting to watch it for scientific purposes, to observe the face of this very man, to know what you are dealing with. What we all are dealing with, because this guy has over than 7 millions of subscribers. Besides his insulting level of performance in the game, what made the biggest impression on me about this dude is that he doesn't seem to really want to do this video; it's more like a routine job to him, and a pretty boring one. He is a little grumpy, sleepy perhaps, but who doesn't have his bad days in the office?

  Example 2. Okay, this is a good one. A rare gem. A guy with the nickname Rad Brad, who obviously doesn't have the slightest idea about Silent Hill, yet he has the nerve to call his video "walkthough". He is so helpless in this game that his videos seem to last for ever, while he aimlessly wanders in the game's mazes. Hours and hours of wasted bandwidth. When I first played the game in 2003 two years after its release, it took me half of the time to finish Silent Hill 2 than it took him for a walkthrough that is supposed to be a guide for new players or those who have difficulties in the game. Now after having watched this embarrassing sample of his work, what I'm going to reveal to you now, will probably make you want to hit your head against the wall, but better not do it because i's dangerous. This unbelievable guy, believe it or not, is considered by the FMV magazine as the "King of walkthroughs"! But if the King of walkthroughs is so incompetent in what he is doing, then I suppose it would be quite appropriate to say that "the King is naked!"

  Example 3. Next is MostDangerousGaming. This fellow starts off quite promisingly. In his introduction he repeatedly says that he knows the game, he has played it before, he assures us that it's not a blind playthrough, that he has supposedly watched other videos of how to play properly the game, and so we are prepared to watch at least a decent video. I won't spoil it to you, just watch his level of proficiency in the game at the point when he first takes in his hands the control of James. It's a good thing he came prepared to play this.

  And those three guys, and the other dozens that I have watched these last two days, are nothing more than a drop in the ocean of incompetence, ignorance and stupidity. And I will go even further. How many of those parasites exist in YouTube? Let's say that there is 1 million of those YouTube users that their only purpose is how to ridicule themselves, yell, laugh, make the clown to gain views and subs. Note that these "funny people" all have partnerships with web companies that their role is to grant for them copyright licences from the respective video game companies their footage comes from, so that they can put ads in those videos and make a profit from this business. The game companies earn money from those contracts, and free advertisement of their products. The web companies, known as "partners" where they play the role of the middleman in this story, they earn ridiculous amounts of money too. The clowns you saw in the videos, they earn their little something too and the recognition they so much seek. A win-win-win situation. There is only one loser: the viewers that watch this circus. And we are talking about millions and millions of viewers that happilly watch this garbage. If you have any doubts, go and check the comments sections under any of this type of videos. You won't see anyone protesting for their insulting quality. If you read their comments, they all sound very pleased with what they watch.

  If for Ronald Reagan Soviet Union was the "evil empire", for me this title belongs to YouTube. Emptiness and stupidity are the biggest evil. YouTube is pretty much the ideal virtual place for empty and stupid people to blossom. Don't forget that Justin Bieber became what he is today from YouTube. Though Justin Bieber is not stupid. And I don't know many stupid billionaires in this world. Stupid are those who support him. And I have the suspicion those who hate him also. Anyway it isn't so important who is what, the fact is that this place oozes stupidity and the longer you reside the bigger risk you have to reach the full status of an idiot yourself, if you are not already born one.

  Remember the time before YouTube? I'm sure you all have played Metal Gear Solid 3, and chances are that at some point you consulted a walkthough guide to find out the hidden locations of those damn frogs in order to gain a good emblem at the end of the game, or perhaps you couldn't figure how to catch a Tsuchinoko alive. I don't know about you, but personally I don't remember having read a walkthrough guide from the era of Final Fantasy VII to Dead Rising, that was anything less than perfect and in case helpful. Did anyone of you happen to read any Game FAQs guide where the writer didn't know what the game was about? Did you see anyone writing: "Pardon me, but I'm really confused I don't know where to go next. Sorry, these things happen. And I also don't know what is the best strategy to fight Revolver Ocelot. Just shoot at him and heal often. I don't know what else to say. Here, I will all tell you a joke instead, or I will imitate the sounds of two cats fighting on the rooftop..." Does this sound ridiculous? Absurd? It shouldn't. Because that's what a standard walkthough video offers to the viewer today. Pointless talking and cheap comedy.

  So is YouTube the one to blame for this situation? Yes. YouTube is the company that hosts all these strange practices, the company that allows this monkey business to happen in the first place. Besides all other third party companies that offer partnership contracts, YouTube itself offers partnerships too! I think I don't need to add anything else as an argument.

  And in the midst of all this confusion and mental decline of players, Konami releases last year the infamous Silent Hill HD Collection. After a little research I had done, I found out that Konami had lost (!) the original completed game archives of Silent Hill 2 and 3, and instead gave to the development team of the HD Collection the beta versions of those games. What we were served as remastered versions of SH2 and SH3, were actually the remastered beta versions! Hence all the unsolvable problems and bugs. With all the situation we discussed above, with Pie Die Pew controlling James with his left elbow on the analog stick and with the other hand holding his milkshake cup, scratching himself, and making funny noises, while his audience watches him with affection, expressing their approval for his show, why should Konami care to make a decent release of Silent Hill 2? What's the point? Who gives a shit anyway about Silent Hill 2, besides me, ten of my friends and some other old timers here and there? Do you honestly believe that all those millions of brainwashed gamers, do they really care if the fog in the game is dense enough and if Heather's new voice is better, or worse than the original? What those people can appreciate about masterpieces as Silent Hill 2? What do they know about games? I wanted to write about how Haneke's "Amour", the winner of this year's Palme d'Or award reminded me of the dramatic qualities and story of Silent Hill 2, and why I think this game deserves big respect- it surely deserved a better HD conversion...but honestly why don't we all go and watch some Pie Die Pew videos and forget all about it.

  • Posted May 11, 2013 8:29 am GMT
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• 21Apr 13

  What the...?

  A short straight forward question: What the hell is wrong with Mass Effect 3? I stopped playing the game just a few seconds before, logged in to GameSpot and started typing these with the hope that someone who has played the previous ME games can perhaps enlighten me a little with this. I'm playing the game for less than two hours and honestly I can't believe in my eyes!

  Firstly, I'm shocked with how colourless and low-resolution everything looks like. And it's not my TV tuning, or any other problem. This is my first Mass Effect game on the PS3 and I'm 100% sure that Mass Effect 2 on the Xbox looked clearly better. How this can be? Is it the difference between Xbox and PS3 so striking after all? Is ME 3 a cheaper game? But that doesn't make sense, even if it is a lower budget game they could simply copy paste some elements from the previous games so it can be at least of the same graphical quality. Ashley's face is unrecognizable, you can not see any expression, or any special detail on her face, it's like an alpha version of what we finally saw in ME 2. And Liara! LOL, she is ugly like a gargoyle, her skin is not blue anymore, it's grey. Am I too tired and my eyes fooled me? I don't get it..

  Secondly: the whole third person view handling of the game looks awfully dated. Mass Effect is supposed to be an action-rpg, but the control, the camera view and  the animations are a joke. The female Shepard walks and moves in the space just like a male Shepard with bust. No, not even that, instead of a bust, we see two tennis balls covered by some high-tech-my foot, equipment. I wonder, how many hours, or minutes did the production team spend in the creation of female Shepard?

  ME 3 there is no way it can pass for an action game. Not even close. Action was never the strongest element of the series, but for a 2012 release of a big AAA game it's unforgivable. There is zero improvement in the department of the third person view action/shooter aspect of the game. Even Elder Scrolls games have better third person view movement of the character, and this is something that I never expected to say, because I found the third person camera and movement of the character in Oblivion to be at least embarrassing. Okay that was a bit mean, I take it back. ME3 has a better third person view control than Oblivion, but only slightly.

  Lastly, it is unbelievable and inexplicable how uninspired the beginning of the game is! Do you remember the first scene of ME 2 with Ashley talking to the Elusive Man? Well I still remember it even though it has been years since I last played it. But I can't even remember how ME3 started, and I played it just two hours ago. It was that boring indifferent to me. Or there is something wrong with me, in my brain in which case I think I should worry.

  Anyway, since unpacking and plugging again the old X360 to the TV just to play again ME2 is out of the question, I think I must pick something else entirely to play...

  Wow, that was a surprise for me. Really.

  On a second thought, something wrong must be with my TV after all. I can't give any other reasonable explanation. Yeah obviously. Forget what I said.

  Good night.

  • Posted Apr 21, 2013 6:22 pm GMT
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