Castle Magus

Ok, wow. I'll admit that I haven't really been following the deep down nitty gritty nuts and bolts of all this, until now, mainly because I just don't care to even think about Epic Games more than I have to, but if the specifics given by Woolie and Pat here are accurate, and I have no valid reason to believe otherwise, then that's even worse than I thought. I'm not sure why it's worse than I thought, because my opinion of Epic Games and their capacity for vile bullshit was already in the toilet, but still. Epic's vile bullshit is even worse than I thought it was, in this case. Half a billion dollars seems a bit on the low side, honestly. "Laws in which the only penalty is a fine is merely telling poor people they can't do it."

Makes Tycho look like an even bigger dumbass for even marginally defending them. Granted, Pat and Woolie also make the "other companies do this shit, too" point, but they're not making it in the "I think Epic's statement is pretty good. I think it's reasonable for them to be somewhat surprised..." kind of way that Tycho did. Epic knew what they were doing, they knew it was wrong (because it was pointed out to them by their own employees beforehand that it was wrong), and they did it anyway. It's vile bullshit, no matter who does it, and the fact that they all do it is no goddamned excuse/defense/reason to cut Epic even the tiniest bit of slack. They all need to be similarly punished for doing it. Epic just happens to be among the first, hopefully of many, onto which the hammer is finally falling, even if so far it just kind of seems like one of those little plushie hammers that squeak when you hit something with it. Like Woolie and Pat point out, Epic will have made that half a billion back in probably less than a month. In any case, as far as anything more grandiose happening to Epic (and the rest) in response to all this vile bullshit, this is simply yet another situation in which my breath won't be held.

Seriously, Pat and Woolie talk about how this is just the age we live in now and they're glad there's a wall somewhere. I can't help but feel like... just imagine a world where people like me and owsf2000 and many others had been listened to for the past decade or three when it came to pointing out all the vile bullshit the modern video game industry has gotten up to and how we were all in danger of said vile bullshit becoming normalized (you know, exactly the way it has). If that were the case, this certainly wouldn't just be the age we live in now, and there would be a hell of a lot more walls in place against shit like this being "the norm" where we're having to beg "don't hurt me too much" or whatever. Alas. I guess all we can do is take care of ourselves, individually, and avoid the vile bullshit on a personal level, where it's possible to do so. And it is very possible to do so. I was never interested in Fortnite to begin with, because it's multiplayer-only PVP horseshit that I've never cared about, but now, even if I were into that kind of thing, I still wouldn't touch Fortnite with a ten foot pole even if you paid me Epic's fine money to do so.

In any case, unless Pat (Contri, not Boivin) and Ian happen to do a CUPodcast thing about this, then this post will probably be the last I make about this whole thing. Possibly. Wouldn't be the first time I've said something like that, then made a dozen more posts about it, but I really don't like having Epic Games and their dumbshittery in my head if I can avoid it.

For once, at least, they were up front about it being infested with Denuvo, so that I can just go on ahead and ignore it already. Not that I would've gotten hyped about it even if they didn't disclose it beforehand, because at this point it's pretty much a given that the shit is going to be there, whether they admit it prior to release or not, based on just about everything else Atlus/Sega has released on Steam in recent years.

Also, it doesn't even include the P3FES "The Answer" epilogue chapter (which, to be marginally fair, wasn't in the original PSP version, either). It does have the female playable character though, so there's that, I guess? In any case, regardless of the version, I won't be buying it while it's contaminated with that shitty malware.

All of the Persona games, every one of them, would have been pretty much assured eventual purchases on Steam by me, if they weren't infected with that dumbfuckery, but because they (still) are/will be, then they can just fuck right off, as far as I'm concerned. Seriously, to hell with Atlus and/or Sega, at least on PC.

Yeah, I'm sure glad I decided to play Saints Row IV before they decided to make it "better" so that I didn't have to deal with any of this shit. I only had to deal with all that other shit, is all.

Ignoring all that other shit, though, it was still a pretty good game overall. With that said, I think I liked Saints Row: The Third better. (Still haven't played Saints Row 2 or that new reboot thing yet.)

(Pre-post edit) Oh... and I just found out that with this new "update," it now apparently installs Epic Online Services with the game, which it did not do before. So yeah, fuck that asinine dumbshit right to hell and back and then to hell again, where it should stay. If that continues to be the case going forward, and isn't (hopefully) backpedaled super-hard at some point in the future, then I'll probably never install this game again, because to hell forever with Epic Games and anything and everything to do with Epic Games. *weary goddamn sigh* (Pre-post edit)

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This is not just about Mass Effect 3 and Woolie's and Reggie's bizarre LP choices. Seriously, an alternative title for this video easily could have been "One Hour of Why EA Sucks Shit | Castle Super Beast Clips."

For me, the main similarity between the Mass Effect series and the Dragon Age series is that, to this day, I still have not bought or touched the third game in each series, nor do I have any intention of doing so any time soon. The main difference is that I actually finished Mass Effect 2, at least, which was not the case for Dragon Age II.

"Digital games are set to take over the physical game market relatively soon, according to analysts. Just how much is true and why?"

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Could've done without the CLICKBAIT HISTRIONICS?! in the video title, because nothing they said or referenced in the video is remotely surprising. Yes, of course, the glorious digital future is here. Clearly, obviously, physical media will (eventually) go the way of the dinosaur. The industry has been barrelling toward this outcome, full speed ahead, for at least a decade now, and all that time they've been conditioning the game-buying public to blithely accept it, just as they've conditioned the game-buying public to accept every other shitty thing the industry has wanted to push through over the past two or three decades. And same as Pat and Ian in this video, I'm not going to discuss here whether that's a good thing or a bad thing (hint: it's not a good thing), at least not any more than I already have. I'm just saying that it is what it is, and it will be what it will be, and there's not much of anything that anyone can do to change that.

You know, when the trailer shows a character just steadily walking in a direction, with the only thing changing being the surroundings every second or so, in order to show off all the "cool" locations in a game. E.g. the first ten seconds of this is the most recent instance I've seen of it, though it's certainly not a thing that's limited to 2D games like that. It's probably unfair of me, but not gonna lie, I've seen that bit in so many trailers now that it's getting pretty tiresome and actually turns me off, at least somewhat, to the games whose trailers do that, regardless of how good the game otherwise may be. It's one of those "hey, that's pretty neat" kind of things the first time you see it, but when you've seen it a hundred times...? Maybe not so much. I mean, I'm not saying that it would completely stop me from getting a game outright, but it's like... come on, guys, come up with something new, okay?

Well... if it ends up with the people who actually created the setting and made the game being reinstated, that would be good. Bonus points if the empty suits that drummed them out in the first place are themselves drummed out forever. Not going to hold my breath on that whole thing, though.

When you put sound options in your game for various volume settings and such, could you maybe also include some sample sounds that play while changing those settings? You know, so we can know how loud it actually is, while still in the settings? A lot of games do this. However, a lot of games do not do this. If your game does not do this, then your game is objectively inferior to the games that do it, at least in that specific regard.

Thanks,
Me.

Who the fuck comes up with dumbshit like this and thinks it's actually a good idea? Capcom, I guess.

(EDIT) Oh, and I didn't even notice that this is also infested with Denuvo, though that's not surprising at all. I didn't even bother to scroll down enough to see that when I first saw this pop up in my discovery queue. So there's that puddle of rancid dumbfuckery slopped on top of the dumbfuckery that is the game itself, as well. Modern video game industry gotta modern video game, after all. (/EDIT)

Really can't wait for the next big thing to come along that the modern[1] video game industry will jump onto like a train, or maybe a bandwagon, and ride it into the ground, where the copycat lives, which they'll grab by the tail and swing at the horse, over and over, until said horse is dead, though that won't stop them from beating it repeatedly, of course.

Basically, I'm just already tired of seeing blatant, inferior Vampire Survivors ripoffs constantly showing up in my Steam discovery queue nowadays. I expect it to get way worse before it ever starts to get better, though.

[1] - Can't even call this a "modern video game industry" thing, honestly, because this has been a thing since at least the days of games like Pac-Man or Breakout or whatever. If it can be made as a video game, it can also be (badly) cloned. But then, of course, it's not a phenomenon that is exclusive to video games either.