@Octane Yeah that's what I meant. Sorry if it's not clear in my original post. Just soooo weird. Guess Sony feels PEGI and ESRB aren't strict enough.
Also wondered about that they are very limiting on the Japanese dev, I think. Iirc there's a homoerotic kind of game for PS4 that they even promoted? Like, okay you don't want these kind of stuff... at least be consistent? Don't be strict on one side and then accept whatever on the other side? (Or just be ok with both)
Note: This doesn't mean I have hatred on homoerotic stuff, more that Sony is being wildly inconsistent.
@darkfenrir They didn't allow Super Seducer to release on the PS4 either, and that's from a western developer (though it looked absolutely awful, so you're not missing out...). I think it seems like they're targeting Japanese games because not many western developers create those types of games, but I don't think it's some personal vendetta against Japanese developers.
@darkfenrir At least with Nintendo's censorship, they were mainly imposing it on games they were publishing. It still sucked, but it's way less chilling for them to alter their own output than to impose their will on other, smaller companies while still loading their own games with horrifying content. Sony right now is reminding me very much of Nintendo in the 90's: super successful, huffed up on their own supply, and full of willingness to use their almost monopolistic status in the industry to impose unreasonable demands on others. But it comes to mind that one of the things that was originally appealing about the Playstation brand was its willingness to publish games with mature and sometimes taboo content.
@Octane I would be a lot less bothered by this if it was applied across the board, to big and small publishers alike. I mean, it'd still irritate me, but I'd have to admire the sheer cojones involved with telling gigantic names like Rockstar to tone it down a bit.
Instead, they're targeting smaller companies that don't have the leverage to fight back. It's gross.
At that site they talked about that game called... Sugar Daddy? Idk though, I didn't really researched that part much.
@Ralizah And yeah that's true. They hit hard on their own content, although iirc while they do censor the third party and stuff, they have clear guidelines on what is accepted and what is not. So it's not like developers send and pray they got a good employee that will accept...
@Dezzy U wot? No...though I grew up watching the BBC, so there you go.
@diwdiws Technically at E3 on reveal they tried to make a good case that it was an RPG, and could be soloed' and has NPCs (which is more than we can say for Fallout 76 that goes out of it's way to say it's still a mostly solitary Fallout experience even though that's a lie). I think they really are trying to sell the "it's an RPG" line as hard as they can, despite how clear it is that it isn't. They want to have it both ways.
I do have a hope that it will have more of an RPG feel than Destiny though. But overall, yes, this was always going to be EA's take on Destiny. There is unlikely to ever be a "Bioware RPG" again since nearly all the "Bioware RPG" staff are long gone, the last of them fled after the purging that occurred with the disaster that was Andromeda.
Destiny 2's not so bad as an RPG-ish thing, but it's light on the RPG, and is more of a "giant Halo strung together as an RPG." Which is fair. Bungie is a shooter company first and foremost and has failed almost everywhere else.
@CanisWolfred Destiny 2 (can't speak for 1) may not be memorable as an RPG, but I can give Destiny credit for being a Bungie shooter that feels like a Bungie shooter. They've never been much for story or world building. Myth was the last time they tried. Their acclaim has always come from a unique, fast, arcade shooting experience, and in that realm they really do have a magic formula. It's not profound, it's not a deep mechanism for experiences, but they have a solid arcade shooting gallery game that plays very well and solid, so I give them credit for taking the linear lessons of Halo and turning that into a more engaging, immersive world of larger scope. No it's not a real RPG, but it takes what people like about Bungie games and makes something bigger out of it. It does some things better than Halo, and Halo did a lot of things right as a pure arcade rails experience.
If Anthem can take that, but instead turn it into a compelling questing structure Mass Effect style rather than just being a DICE version of Bungie, it could be pretty good. The game comes out in March, so I'm not too worried about not knowing characters yet. If we don't hear more about story by Feb, we're in trouble. But the roundtables did suggest they were making story a focus.
Personally though, Borderlands 2 is the game I feel is overrated. I played past the big gunner, and that long climb up to get the pirate guy and after slaying 10 million bad guys, and respawning 30 times to take the gunner out I got so bored I put it down. I will try it again on PSVR now that its' coming out. It might add something it didn't have before.
@darkfenrir@ralizah I don't care either way about censorship of sexual content in the US for US releases. Cultural norms and all that. But what I don't get is, video games censor everything for "cultural norms" while HBO does....what HBO does.... which has bled into mainstream film and TV, where there are now (post Weinstein) going to be coaches on set for nude scenes etc. So TV and film can do actual nudity, and video games can't have short-skirt stuff....it's a little weird. Meanwhile RDR2, not censored, has full-on porn moments. Let alone the celebration of gratuitous violence that is multimedia. If it were consistent, if it were "We do not display nudity in the US as it betrays our Christian roots" I could fully accept that. That's the norm for our culture and our content is made to adapt to that, fine. But it isn't the norm for our culture. Film and TV get a pass, Victoria's Secret can run soft-porn adverts during replays of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, but video games are showing too much thigh and the Bobbysoxers might get offended? Huh?
I don't mind censorship. I mind inconsistent censorship. A standard is fine. A different standard applied differently to different people is not. (I get the WiiU censorship, they were self-censoring for the business objective of meeting a certain ratings board rating for sales purposes. I can understand that. I disagree with the pinball games censoring licensed classic machine artwork (that was displayed in public places!) to meet a 12+ rating. If you don't want the artwork, don't license the Elvira machines...it's not hard.)
But Sony is just getting weird. It's like they're fully ceding the Japan market to Switch. Why would Japan be subject to US censorship when publishing in Japan with a company HQ'd in Tokyo? I wonder who owns Sony stocks at this point....I wonder if Sony is in fact Japanese at all, or if it's pretty much all American-investment-money owned now.
@NEStalgia well I guess that is true. I just prefer that censorship to not really exist... Although thinking again, there's some stuff that might need censorship oof.
But the silly puritan look to most of the censorship is what is sucky for my side. LIke... Gore, violence and such are... okay? but sex, or heck, even some mentions of that can be so wrong? Like, ugh. Idk man.
So in the end it's just all weird, double standard and everything o+<
(sorry this ends up more like rambling/ranting I guess)
They've never been much for story or world building.
Uh, Halo? Pretty much every entry they worked on had a good story, and memorable characters, as well as distinct factions and enemy types that actually required more than 2 specific strategies to deal with. The only thing that's consistant between Destiny 1 & 2 and the Halo franchise are the music, and the fact they're both fairly liner shooters that focus on the moment-to-moment shooting.
And my problem with it is that I find less immersive and engaging, largly due to its repetition. It may be formulic, but it's a formula that's exposed and on full display - it's obscene, if you will. The larger maps don't really feel like they're there to be explored, at least from what I played, so it's just more filler while you progress through the levels. Enemies are often repetitive, environments are recycled, most of the bosses are just larger versions of other enemies, the guns don't feel unique outside of their specific weapon-types, they mostly have bigger stats, and look different from eachother...
And that's before getting into the myriad of problems, glitches, shady tactics, and general skulldugary that's surrounded the franchise.
At the end of the day, I feel like it narrowly met the bar for what can be considered a "decent" game, regardless of the studio that made it, in the most clinical way possible. It's scientifically proven to keep a certain audience engaged, but I'd like to think there's more to making a game than probing a person's pleasure centers with focus-tested formulas. It's the very definition of a soulless product, and begs to be looked at through a cynical lens.
As for Anthem, I'll believe it when I see it. I need to see the quest structure, the level progression, and a couple examples of the actual quests involved. I'd like to believe EA has the sense to make their product stand out, but...I think the only thing EA can be trusted for at this point is that they're find a way to screw up.
@NEStalgia Eh, I disagree. People struggling against the bounds of Christian puritanism is the reason publishers can print Ulysses in the United States without being subject to obscenity charges. It's the reason people can be open about being sexual matters, up to and including matters pertaining to sexual orientation and identity. It's the reason public sex education has so drastically improved over the years. In general, it's why artists in the U.S. can express challenging and often controversial themes in art without the Christian Taliban destroying them for it.
This sort of thing can and should be opposed. Even now that it's coming more from the social justice-oriented left.
Some censorship will always exist, and I even think, to some extent, the push and pull of censorious forces against people tiring of their strictures is probably good for society as a whole. It's a Hegelian process that evens out the most outrageous edges of those inclined to shock and offend others while shrinking the heavy hand of the censor and authoritarian. I think that dynamic has largely broken down, though, in the wake of censorship happening along ideological lines. The dynamic I described can only exist in a largely unified society that goes through the process together, but American society is increasingly divided into entrenched, hostile camps.
Switch is still missing the bigger 3rd party support for Japan to leave Sony behind. Don't think it was like this last gen but Japan seems pretty interested in stuff like CoD and Red Dead nowadays.
Been playing some Monster Hunter World in my brief bouts of playtime. It's alright. Nothing really as extraordinary as the internet made it seem around release. It's mostly tedious.
I took a break from Destiny 2. I'm sure I'll get back into it eventually because it is expertly made and just damn fun to play no matter what you do, but for now I'm kinda of bored of Games as Service type of design. I keep eyeing God of War since it's one of the few games this year that made me genuinely believe in gaming overall again. It had a story to tell with exemplary gameplay and it did it from day 1. No stupid DLC despite it being plenty ripe for it, and no tacked on multiplayer or premium currency. It actually felt like an honest game. I hope it gets as many Game of the Year awards as possible.
@CanisWolfred Well, Halo had MC, Cortana, and Sarge. Beyond that, the characters aren't particularly a thing, the story is direct, it's mostly about the gameplay. Bungie is kind of like Miyamoto's design philosophy: Gameplay first, snap a story onto it that works later. Which is fine, if not refreshing. But despite that Halo turned into a well loved world, I wouldn't call it a deep or engaging story. The art concept built the world more than direct story telling. Destiny 2, I'd say has less memorable characters, but a more interesting story/world premise. Actually I take that back. Cade, the Dominus, and the ghost are memorable.
Personally I don't find Destiny more or less boring than Halo. The bungie formula has great gunplay but the repetition in all their games bores me after a while. Keep in mind also I can speak only on Destiny 2. I never played 1 and didn't enter 2 with the soured expectations 1 may leave behind.
Halo and Destiny 2 both seem like a well designed but poorly built world, built on repetitive but well made gunplay. Destiny adds the loot mechanic, as a Diablo fan, that doesn't bother me. Borderlands, I love the characters but the shooting is even more repetitious than Destiny and not as good. Of course I'm not the "800 hours of grinding MMO" player Destiny wants, I just want to play through my campaign. As an arcade shooter it's fun in the way Bungie makes fun shooting. Anthem is weird because it's their big budget upcoming thing, and yet they speak so little of its details.
@Ralizah "censoring" along a solid cultural norm is hard to be against. Any society can determine what will or won't be its standard for anything and has a right to build that society. Our problem isn't that we're censoring along a defined standard. It's that there's apparently no standard so anyone will go for either as much control of, or as much leeway as they can get per-industry, and we somehow call that "freedom." Why not just run porn on NBC every weekday night from 6:00-12:30? Standards, norms, and censoring. The problem is that we don't have an actual standard or norm to censor to, so it's just overreaching from all sides.
As for the US' division, I'm still quite certain another civil war occurs at some point. You can't have two completely separate cultures with completely separate values and separate visions of the future and expect they will just coexist happily forever, as one inevitably has to control or eliminate the other. One way or another there will be a catalyst eventually. The culture has changed into two or three completely separate societies, and either a peaceful split, or a not so peaceful one is inevitable.
@EvilLucario Nah, Nintendo was always like that. They just didn't let it be known in the west. Sony has never offered love motels.
"Nintendo. Get it ON."
@Grumblevolcano PS4 numbers in Japan aren't really great to begin with though. A big portion of PS4 buyers in Japan are buying CoD and Red Dead, but PS4 buyers aren't really a big portion of Japan or Japanese gaming in general these days. I still don't know how or why CoD and RDR are selling in Japan though. I swear it's only foreigners living in Japan buying them. Or....what's the Japanese inverse of a weeb that buys American things just because?
@PikPi MHW is MH. MH is always MH. Love it or hate it, it's still going to be MH.
@Ralizah LOL P0nies all buy their kiddie consoles! I hope the PS4 is purple and has a handle for all the kiddie games! Real men buy Nintendo Switch and play real games like XC2 and Senran Kagura! Enjoy your comic book games, P0nies!
@NEStalgia Different people in a pluralistic society have different standards for what is or is not appropriate. It's a foundational aspect of American society. So it doesn't make any sense to discuss cultural norms in anything other than a purely descriptive sense, as norms shift and alter with the push and pull of different social forces over time. Christian fundamentalists have no more claim over the culture than liberal secularists do, and neither have the right to impose their will on the other.
And there won't be a shooting civil war like in the 1800s. For one thing, it would throw the entire world into chaos, and, for another, we have far more tools at our disposal now. We're already in the middle of a civil war in America. It's an information and culture war, and various forces are vying for supremacy over the opposition. It's what Gamergate was. It's what Trump's rise represents. It's what mass social media censorship of the alt right is about. I expect this generation to stay immersed in a perpetual culture war, and for this to only change with radically shifting ages and demographics.
@Ralizah It won't be a structural military shooting war with cavalries, forts, and battle lines, but the information/culture war won't remain such forever. The escalation of tensions is palpable. Eventually forum arguments and yelling at reports won't be enough. Eventually it will become an Irish Civil War type guerilla conflict, or all out chaos followed by foreign intervention and domination. All the "information and culture war" aspects you mention are building to something. It's not human nature to keep arguing and getting nowhere indefinitely. For now, there's no catalyst. Wait for one. It'll happen. The status quo is impossible to sustain forever. A depression, food shortage/famine. Big tech keeps telling us that such great swaths of workforce are about to be displaced and governments need universal income schemes to raise the unemployable third of the population as pets. Take a hundred million people with nothing to lose and unbending rage and watch the fireworks.
Sounds like this should be a Kojima film...
@EvilLucario Maybe Sega's going to need to fire up the ad campaigns again. Night Trap II confirmed?
@NEStalgia I expect the first organized attempt to radically strike out against a rival tribal faction to become the last when they can't survive because companies are unwilling to provide them power, PayPal and Mastercard are unwilling to process their payments, etc. The multinational corps we're all reliant on have an interest in preserving a status quo, as a breakdown in civil society will mess with their ability to generate profit.
I don't deny the trouble-making potential of large masses of bored and disenfranchised people (again, this arguably explains a lot of what has happened in recent years), but such people are still far too reliant on modern civilization to seriously upset the established order of things too much.
To that end, I could see an increase in domestic terrorism, even as a status quo is forcibly maintained by the government and corporations in the services of capitalism.
And, yes, I can't stop thinking of MGS2. The script for that game is a chilling read in 2018. It's vaguely conspiratorial enough to sound prophetic no matter what perspective you're coming from.
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