Review: Dragon's Crown - 2D Side-scrolling Action with a Lot of But(t)s...

Way back in the day, we had these things called "arcades" where gamers would go to spend "quarters" to play video games.  Among fighting titles like Street Fighter, racers like Cruisn', and those rigged-as-hell claw machines, you could often find the side-scroller - a game that featured up to 4 players who walked towards the right fighting various enemies along the way and eventually ended in a boss fight.  Then those players were dropped into a new locale to repeat the process until the designers had decided the game was over.  Many classic titles include Streets of Rage, Double Dragon, a handful of titles branded under the Dungeons & Dragons franchise, and, of course, The Simpsons Arcade Game.

In an attempt to breathe new life back into the genre that effectively went the same way as the "arcade" (and dinosaurs, etc.), Vanillaware (famous for Odin Sphere and Muramasa: The Demon Blade, 2D side-scrolling beat 'em ups with RPG elements) has given us Dragon's Crown, a 2D side-scrolling beat 'em up with RPG elements.  Quite frankly, they've succeeded, but is this generation ready to take on the task of perpetually walking to the right until you reach a boss fight?

Grand Theft Auto V Review, Part 1

Grand Theft Auto V was one of the most anticipated titles of this console generation, and near universally praised by "professional" critics. Often waving away its flaws(and there are many), and instead valuing the game on the amount of content, opposed to the quality thereof, many of the currently available reviews are a testament as to why the business of game journalism is often considered a mere shadow of the more traditional type(which over the past two decades has become even more soulless and manipulatory itself).

There will be none of that here. Grand Theft Auto V does have some high points(which won't be overlooked either), but they're often dragged down by the thoughtless content crammed in to fill the otherwise empty space around them. I've got an axe to grind, and Rockstar gave me a stone on which to do it. It's time to have a go at one of the most successful titles this year, both critically and commercially, with a jackhammer. I'm going to sort out which of the individual components aren't so shiny when looked at with an eye to detail, rather than being blinded by the total package.

Grand Theft Auto V, controversy, and rage... Let's fucking do this.

Follow (Not Quite) Friday

This post was originally planned for Friday to coincide with the whole #FF thing, but (surprisingly) the Dragon's Crown review is taking a little longer and a bit more brain-power than previously anticipated.  So in the interim I've decided to do a little something I've been considering for a bit.  Below is a list of people in the video game journalism/lifestyle community "thing" that have inspired me and eventually lead me to start up Zero Tolerance Games.  They're all awesome people that have great thoughts and insights to the gaming world and I highly suggest paying them some attention (on twitter or otherwise).

Jim Sterling (@JimSterling) - Introduced to me through his video series Jimquisition on The Escapist, Jim is also a journalist over at Destructoid, part of the weekly Podtoid group, and has his own Let's Play series called Now Bloody Playing on youtube.  While most Jimquisitions are focused on negative or could-be-improved aspects of the gaming industry, the man does give some very fair scores in his reviews and does a great job of seeing the best in everything.  He also waves around rubber sex toys on camera.

Grey Carter (@GreyTheTick) - Writer for the webcomic Critical Miss and freelance game journalist, Grey is a very cynical sarcastic individual who's humor I appreciate very much.  His tweets are occasionally funny and often rather insightful.  Most importantly, Grey is a harsh judge when it comes to gaming.  Games don't deserve an instant 7/10 for just existing and his grading scale starts at 0 and goes up, instead of starting at 10 and marking down.  Personally, I find harsh critiques to be the best, since it shows me the flaws in a game and allows me to ponder whether or not those particular flaws are things that I can overlook or embrace or if they're dealbreakers.

Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw (@YahtzeeCroshaw) - Famous for his Zero Punctuation series of audio/video reviews, Yahtzee is pretty much the singular reason I finally ended up getting Zero Tolerance off the ground.  I figured that if some angry Brit could rant about games on the internet, pointing out each individual flaw and mocking them for it, that I could start a blog doing roughly the same thing.  As my writing has developed, I've found that I've gotten a) a little less harsh and b) tend to play good games or games that I enjoy a lot more than shelling out money for crap that I can't stand just to blog about it.

Warren Ellis (@warrenellis) - British writer Warren Ellis is technically the other 50% of why I finally started Zero Tolerance.  His comic series Transmetropolitan follows rogue journalist Spider Jerusalem on a quest for truth in a nameless city in a dystopian future.  More absurd mockery and less gritty cyberpunk, Transmetropolitan also kick-started my desire to criticize the games industry as well as the games themselves.

With any luck, this piece has offered you some insight into the mind and origins of one of us driving forces here at Zero Tolerance Games.  We're not corporately funded, we don't have any backing or make any money doing this.  We do this for the love of gaming and the love of the industry, even when it's spending all its time and money fucking things up.  These people are just a couple that help inspire that passion.

-Nik "Latency" Trumble

Potatoes, Waifus, Dreams, Sandstorm, and Mexi-Everything

The Grand Theft Auto V review will go up Thursday; I just finished it last night, and need a little more time to gather my thoughts. No podcast again this week; life got in the way this time, hoping to get one up next week.

Today, I'd like to talk about the time vortex that is Salty Bet.

Food for Thought: Bayonetta and Feminism

Here's an idea: What if Bayonetta, the over-sexed action heroine from the game of the same name, was arguably one of the most feminist characters of our generation?

GTAV First Impressions And Miscellaneous Updates

No podcast this week. We had the full intention to record one, and were in the planning stages when we got distracted, primarily due to a lack of ideas at the time. Maybe next week, maybe another week down the road, when more is happening in the industry, and we actually have things to discuss. The source of our distraction will remain unnamed for now, as it's something either I or Nik will cover in the next two weeks.

Review: Saints Row IV – This is How We Do It

Shortly after I'd finished Saints Row: The Third, the 4^th installment had been announced. After the overload of comical violence, memorable characters, and gang-related mayhem I'd just been exposed to, I was left pondering one thing about the sequel. “How do you get bigger and more bombastic than Saints Row 3? Where do we go from here?”

Three Ideas, One Half-Assed Title

Tonight, since I was unable to really pick between the ideas I had come up with, you're going to get three bite-sized pieces for the price of one, which is, well, free. The first is a follow up to an earlier piece on what developers can do to interest me in next-gen. The second is a bit more in the epic saga of Microsoft trying to bury themselves with the upcoming console generation. The third is a bit on the Katamari franchise, the rise and fall thereof, and why it was so important.

The Closed Reality of Open World Games

As I was playing Saints Row The Third earlier, I was roaming around, unarmed, looking for collectibles. I walked down a little alley, with no notoriety, towards some sort of factory, and suddenly was taking fire from police. I found it odd, because nothing had been mentioned about restricted areas in the game, and, though I've gotten used to taking fire from rival gang members unprovoked, this was the first time the police had taken the initiative on such an occasion.

STOP THE PRESSES - EA to Release 6 - 8 New IPs

For a while now, I've considered Activision President and CEO Bobby Kotick to be the face of everything wrong with the video game industry.  The man who claimed that "if it was left to me, I'd raise prices even further" and coined the term annualizable, Kotick stood (and frankly still stands) for everything I've come to hate about major publishers.  Activision drove the Guitar Hero franchise into the GROUND, delivering sequel after sequel even long after fans had stopped caring.  They continue to bombard us with a new Call of Duty every fucking year, and they'll only pick up an IP that they feel can be "exploited every year on every platform".

So when Ubisoft's VP of Sales and Marketing, Tony Key, made a statement to near similar effect, I ran through the gauntlet of emotions.  First, I was outraged that yet another major publisher had joined the Annualizable Axis of Evil.  Then I was saddened by having to expect a Watch_Dogs 2 in 2014.  Ultimately, I was rather in awe of Key's courage for being vocal about exactly what every other major publisher was already doing: spamming us with yearly sequels guaranteed to make a quick buck.

Now imagine my surprise when I read this quote today from EA Games Executive Vice President Patrick Soderlund:

"We have six to eight completely new IPs in the works. The day we stop making new IP is when we go onto life support. We need to incubate new ideas and push creative boundaries."

 Wait... What?  EA is trying to push forward new IPs?  Can it really be true?  Well... sort of.  In the same interview with MCV, Soderlund also stated, "We are working on a new Mirror’s Edge game, and although that’s not a new IP, it is a revival done in a new way. We are developing Star Wars Battlefront, which to us is a new IP, even though it isn’t technically."

Assuming that Mirror's Edge and Battlefront are two of the IPs EA considers "new", that still leaves roughly four to six new ideas up in the air.  The real question that should be on everybody's mind is "are these new IPs already doomed to be beaten with the same annual stick as the rest of the corral?

Source: MCV

10 Titles, One Post: Quickie Reviews #1

A quick update before we begin: We have not forgotten, nor abandoned, our attempts at a podcast. It will be coming back, and soon. Current plan is for the week of September 16th, though that's not a hard deadline.

Tonight, I'm going to review some games I've played that just didn't conjure up enough in me to validate a full piece. Some are good, others are not, but all shall be judged.

Second Opinion: Divekick

Mike talked about quite a few changes or, more accurately, updates to the operation of Zero Tolerance.  Tonight, I plan to exemplify a couple of those.  Obviously, this will be the first "Second Opinion" piece done here.  Additionally, I'll be breaking Divekick down and commenting on some very particular areas, and giving it an overall letter grade at the end.  Let's begin.

From Here on Out

There's a learning curve involved with this kind of thing, and I'd like to think we've learned a lot over the past three months or so here at Zero Tolerance. With that said, there's going to be some changes coming down the pipeline. A little more structure is needed, and we think that maybe we've found a way to add it, without adding any extra bullshit.