How dare you, Capcom. You’ve got some nerve, waltzing in here like you own the place and slapping your loyal fans right in fucking face with your giant ball-top style cock. After everything I’ve done for you, Capcom, you have the cheek, the sheer audacity, to include bad box art Megaman in Street Fighter X Tekken.

Fuck you, Capcom.

Fuck you to Hell.

Literally fuck you with my penis all the way down into the fires of Hell itself.





Why? Why did you do this to me? Why would you include bad box art Megaman as one of the joke characters in SFXT? Why didn’t you pick the other Megaman, you know, classic Megaman, or Megaman X, or Mega Man Volnutt, or Megaman.exe, or Star Force Megaman, or the old cartoon Megaman, or the other old Captain N cartoon Megaman. If you picked one of them nobody would have complained that it wasn’t one of the others.

You have once again disrespected devoted Megaman fans by including an in-joke only they will get and have laughed about for decades, you bastards. You murdered Megaman, and nobody ever talks about him anymore, but that wasn’t enough for you was it? You had to dig up his rotting corpse and drag it through the mud one more time, just to spite us. Just to antagonize the people who keep asking for more Megaman – you gave them more Megaman, you are literally the worst people ever, provoking the fans who gave you nothing but unconditional love for years until you did something we didn’t like.




You will treat him with God damn respect he deserves.


First, they cancel Megaman Legends 3, just because they didn’t think it would make any money, as if that makes any kind of sense, the idea that a company would rather make a profit then please a handful of people is ludicrous, then, they put Zero in MvC3, and Zero isn’t Megaman and they know that, then they put a picture of Megaman in the background of UMvC, as if to say “We hear your concerns but we don’t give a shit and also hate you”, then after all the kicking and screaming we did about Megaman not being in a fighting game, they put him in a fighting game, the sons of bitches. By making reference to a bit of trivia only Megaman fans get and joke about they are clearly telling us how much they hate Megaman and how much they hate us.

Bad box art Megaman is clearly a metaphor for how they feel about Megaman today, he’s nothing but a joke, a bloated, disgusting, mistake from the past who’s only remaining purpose is to be laughed at, just like his fans. Some people might just think that they did it ‘cause it’s funny, and sure, some people might argue that Megaman has been much more prevalent since his “death” then he ever was at the height of his popularity, but those people are wrong.....because. Bad box art Megaman’s appearance in SFxT is clearly intended as phlegmy gob of spit thwaping off the collective face of all Megaman fans. For Capcom, or should I say Crapcom, because they are crap, this is nothing but a mean spirited gesture.




When we joke about it, it’s funny and ironic. When you joke about it, it’s a malicious, backhanded insult.

Because logic.


For Christ sake, my firstborn is called Cut Man, do you know how much bullying she receives over that? But I’m willing to bear that burden because I care, about Megaman. Apparently I’m the only one who still does, so how dare you, Capcom, how dare you listen to what fans are complaining about and then give it to them in a funny and different way, you are actually worse than Hitler, do you know that? I don’t know about you, but I’m buying a ticket to Comic-Con so I can personally make sure Seth Killian actually gets punched in the face this time, because it was probably his decision.

Darksiders 2 is nothing if not thematically consistent...
















I’ll be generous here and ignore the poorly textured floor made entirely of skulls.





I realise I missed his knees here but I also ignored the big pile of skulls in the background.











I love how one of the most sparing pictures still has a GIANT FUCKING SKULL.




Actually, that one’s not so ba-....wait a minute.



What is that?



Darksiders don’t you try to pull this on me!



FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU





137 skulls in 13 screenshots.

Darksiders 2: It’s about death in case you didn't know!

Coming this June!

Merry Christmas Destructoid! Chances are if you’re reading this you’re having a lovely time relaxing by the warm glow of the internet, or, you had to get the hell out of there and let your brain rest for a minute, either way my mind-dulling insipid dronings should put you at ease for the moment. Not really much point to this post, I saw all the Christmas cheer flying around on Christmas Eve and just thought I’d throw another Yule log on the fire.



I really do love this place, the staff are constantly amazing, turning videogame news into videogame entertainment on an hourly basis, and are genuine, nice people who care about games at it shows in everything they write. And the community, you people are just astounding, I honestly lack the verbal fortitude to adequately describe the feelings of utter delight you inspire in me, you people are what make this place feel like home.

Home, that’s a word I’ve heard a lot recently from people talking about Destructoid, but I think it holds true, it’s hard to imagine something you could call home in something as intangible as a website but that’s how I, and apparently many others, feel about this place. And it’s all thanks to the support and continual reassurance of the community, yes you, reading this right now, thank you.



I’d love to mention a few of the people I appreciate in particular, I would love to name names, but I can’t, I know I would forget someone and I’d hate for anybody to be left out. I’d also love to say something like “you know who you are” but chances are you don’t, you don’t know the positive effects you’ve had on my life, so I’ll just thank everyone, thank you to the staff, who keep this ship afloat and never fail to entertain, thank you to the community, who have made this a place where the worst case scenario for openly stating you opinion is an interesting debate and always motivate me to try and write better blogs for you, and thank you so much Neiro for giving us this place to call home.



I’ll stop now, if this blog gets any sweeter it would literally be a kitten covered in syrup, and then the syrup would harden and petrify the kitten inside, and then I would carry the syrup-stasis kitten around on a walking stick like the guy from Jurassic Park. I’d have liken to do something a little more creative but instead why don’t we remember that poem I wrote and imagine all the references I made were still relevant.

Merry Christmas!

(I know, worst title ever)

Hey, you know those stupid prediction articles that are all made up of guesswork skewed by the writer’s personal preferences, the ones that serve to only stroke the writer’s ego as they furrow their brows and pretend to be the next Michael Pachter as if being the next Michael Pachter is something to aspire to?
Yeah, let’s do one of those!

So, Final Fantasy, you may have heard of it, chances are you have strong opinions about it, and the general consensus seem to be that it isn’t as good as it used to be, when exactly “used to be” was differs from person to person, but I’d imagine most don’t exactly consider the current games to be living up to the legacy. That’s why I want to talk about Versus XIII, and its potential to revitalise the franchise, if not outright save it. (Save it from mediocrity that is, it’s not like they’ll stop making money anytime soon)

FF13 was a bit of a mixed bag, there’s been plenty of blogs about the games problems and merits so I won’t open that particular can of worms just yet, personally I thought it was a good game but a poor Final Fantasy, if that makes any sense. Instead, I’d like to look at where the franchise is headed with both 13-2 and Versus and why I think these two games are a pivotal fork in the road for SquareEnix’s future success, or at the least, their reputation.



Final Fantasy XII-2......hwaaaa........ to be honest, I don’t think it’ll be a good game, like, at all, in the slightest, I have zero confidence in it, and this is coming from someone who’s indifferent to the last game at worst. Square say they’re addressing the problems people had with the first game, but from everything we know so far I just can’t see how things are improving. Let’s start with the characters, the heart and soul of any FF game, Sarah and Noel seem to be the only permanent party members from the looks of things, so I hope ya like ‘em ‘cause you’re stuck with ‘em. Call me sceptical, but I don’t see Noel’s “carefree, charge in head-on” attitude breaking new ground as far as JRPGs go, and Sarah, quite frankly, seems like she was more interesting when she was an inanimate object, she looked like she stood a better chance in a fight when she was made of glass too.

Granted this is all hearsay till the game comes out, maybe they’ll have a surprising amount of depth, maybe we’ll be able to explore their characters more deeply now that there are only two party members, maybe while expanding her horizons and travelling the wider world Sarah will start to develop feelings for Noel or question her engagement to Snow. But, I just don’t see it happening. Speaking of the story, remember how FF13’s plot, while not terribly complicated, was made confusing because they kept inserting their own terminology for words that already existed and just generally did a bad job telling us what was happening? Well guess how they’re going to remedy that confusion?



Time travel and alternate dimensions! Because if there’s two things that can make a story coherent and easy to understand it’s time travel and alternate dimensions. There’s plenty of other stuff too, the battle system is being tweaked, so that’s really a matter of personal preference (I liked it once you had a decent amount of options), the third party member being replaced with monsters you collect, QTEs, a lot of reused assets, which I guess is to be expected from a game turned out in less than a year. Then there’s the plot, Noel and Sarah have to travel through time to save Lightning from an alternate dimension where she is a warrior goddess locked in a battle with an unkillable villain who has been described as “Her version of Sephiroth” and looks like he was specifically designed so we could laugh at cosplayers at a later date.

I have a black eye because that plot synopsis made me curl my fist in rage and facepalm at the same time. Honestly, this may be the worst direction I’ve seen a series take since Suicide Bomberman. But enough, I didn’t mean to harp on 13-2 so long, nor did I intend to be so hard on it, but everything I see just rubs me the wrong way, and I don’t think all the moogles and pink hair in the world can save it now (sorry Dale).The most I can expect is an improved battle system but the story and characters, and how both seem to be lacking, may drag it down. And again, all this is just speculation till we get some proper time with it, I’d be thrilled to be proven wrong.



But anyway, this blog is supposed to be about hope! And I believe Versus 13 is Final Fantasy’s best hope for a return to form. I can’t remember the last time I read something about FF13 or 13-2 without Versus being brought up. One of Verses’ greatest strength is its status as a spinoff, you see, every Final Fantasy game has to both reinvent the wheel and stay familiar, they need to create a new world, characters, battle system and story, all while making sure to include chocobos, moogles, summons, menu based battles, airships, magic, fabulous character designs, Cactuar, crystals, a guy named Cid and much more. It’s like a bird trying to fly while still clutching its cage in its talons, basically, Final Fantasy has too much baggage.

Versus on the other hand, can pick and choose whatever it wants, they have the freedom to go nuts with this one and still retain the production values most games could only dream of. Of what we know, there are a few points of interest that seem to be shaking thing up in all the right ways, in my eyes at least.


“This is a fantasy based on reality” as stupid as that sentence is, it raises an interesting idea about where we’ve been in FF games up to this point. We’ve seen medieval, fantasy, steampunk, cyberpunk, futuristic and all sorts of weird in-betweens. But we’ve yet to see anything close to our own world, sure there’ll still be monsters and magic, but seeing it in a world we can relate to is at least worth a mention. This extends beyond just cities that look like real cities, an old fashioned world map that’s now to human scale, and a slightly less pretentious and exaggerated story are things to look forward to.



Violence. Cast your mind back, years ago, to that first trailer we saw for Versus. Do you remember the shock you felt as you saw the protagonist impale a soldier? Do you remember the surprise and, admit it, thrill you got as you saw him snap another soldier’s neck? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fan of violence or gore, in fact the more I see in a game the more desperate the developer seems to me *coughVisceralGamescough*, M rarely stands for Mature, just inappropriate for children. But if one series could benefit from “aging it up” it’s Final Fantasy. I’m not asking for gore, but a bit of bloodshed would certainly reinforce the darker, down to earth tones we’ve seen so far.

We don’t know much about the battle system yet, but what we have seen has me really excited for one simple reason – options/variety. I’m not talking about “will I cast thunder or blizzard”, I’m talking about taking out the pilot of a giant robot and deciding to hop in and control it for yourself, I’m talking about fighting an enemy manning a turret and turning it against its allies, I’m talking about luring a monster near an explosive material and switching over to the character who wields guns and going into third person shooting to trigger the explosion. Have we seen this kind of thing in other games? Absolutely. But have we had it in RPGs, especially this style? Not to my knowledge. It’s not even that big a deal in the grand scheme (I basically said I’m excited for exploding barrels), but even the best of battle systems can get repetitive after 40 hours, things like this are what keep us guessing and keep things interesting.



I love Final Fantasy, we all do, everyone has fond memories of it peppered throughout their life, but how many times can you reboot the same basic concept? Is there any other series in any other form of media that’s been reimagined thirteen times? Final Fantasy is like The Simpsons, it was amazing in its heyday, but it’s running out of steam, and the sad truth is it may never be as good as it once was. But maybe that’s okay, because when the Simpsons started to go downhill we got Futurama! That’s how I see Versus, not so much a hark back to the past or a huge leap into unknown territory, but a sidestep, familiar yet experimental, something fresh but still within our comfort zone, branching out but with an assured level of quality. And in the end, isn’t that what Final Fantasy has always been doing?

Hopefully we’ll see it soon, right after Half-life 3 and the new Jet Set Radio.



BLAAAH. That went on way longer then it needed to, I actually don’t feel so good about this blog, I procrastinated for weeks and even ended up writing other stuff in between. But it was just one of those weird ones you just need to get off chest and out of your system you know?

Also, that moogle that transforms into a sword and bow is just dumb. And this in coming from a guy who still thinks gunblades are cool.

Welcome to Fanart Flops, the Destructoid blog series that stole its intro style from Annotated Anime over on Japanator, and I bet you didn’t even notice!

For those not in the know, or the unscarred as we call them, Fanart Flops is a collection of the most awful and confusing videogame fan art that I’m able to post here without someone taking legal action, not because of copyright infringement mind you, but because of the mental and emotional damage you would suffer from seeing them. Seriously, think about the stuff I don’t put in here. I’ve seen things, things you can’t imagine, things that would cause a lesser man to break, and a greater man to take action. But me, all I can do is see them, see them and try to forget.

As always, Fanart Flops are not necessarily badly drawn fan art, many pieces showcase artists with a lot of talent or potential, Fanart Flops are defined by their inexplicable subject matter, bizarre premises, or by just being plain “off” for lack of a better description. This week’s biggest offenders are Final Fantasy and Sonic fans once again, with a healthy dose of Lara Croft thrown in and an entire section dedicated to the most baffling crossover ideas ever conceived by what I assume and the scattered minds of traumatised Vietnam vets trying to piece together the visual media they encounter in a world they can no longer relate to.

That said, join me for one more journey through the garden of madness.



This is the result of Lara working out what I imagine are all the wrong muscles.




Do you really want the Wii U to be HD? Really?




A little late for Halloween but I’ll make an exception




MY GOD, there’s exaggerating features and then there’s outright visual lying. My favourite bit is the creeper poking around the door.




I like to imagine this scene as a father teaching his child to swim tough love style, sans the crotch bulges of course.




I’m as surprised as they are.




Now that’s just some unfortunate contrast. If you can’t see why this makes the cut then try squinting.




Triple your Brock, triple your pleasure.




If you think furry Lara Croft fanart is stupid, just you wait.




BONUS IMAGE! Capcom would probably charge you for this on disk image as DLC even though you bought the full gallery already.




Yeah *slides hand down pants* you tame that crocodile.




Now this is the stuff I feel worst about mocking, the picture isn’t bad per say, just a bit off model, and it’s not like I could do any better. Still, part of me just loves hung over Sephiroth during his eye exam floating there in the background.




You may well consider this good fanart, and I wouldn’t hold it against you.




Punk, much like the Tomb Raider franchise, is not dead in some people’s eyes.




Hogtopus: Still better than the Werehog.




Reapers? You should be worrying about us reaping all the pimp daddies up in HHHEEEEEEEEEEEAAA




Haaaaaaugh. I don’t even know where to start with this, it’s just, no. Boob raider? That’s not clever, you just gave her big boobs and are referencing that! It’s not a pun or anything! IT DOESN’T EVEN RHYME!!! I could go on (a big adventure, ho ho!cumming to a theater near you) but let’s keep this train wreak going.




His strong Christian values are why he keeps giving Sonic Team another chance.




This one just scared me a little...




In case you can’t read the small print – “In memory of a wonderful man...killed by the deception and corruption of Shinra”

In memory of a wonderful man.

A wonderful man.


Wonderful man.




WONDERFUL.




MAN.





Waluigi, as always, appears to make things creepier. If you’ll notice this was drawn on a math book, Waluigi is literally poisoning the minds of our youth.




Weed and guns and trench coats and Knuckles, we all went through this stage in our adolescence right? This is what puberty makes you do to the things you love.




Is there any way I can make fun of this and not sound anti-Semitic? I mean, come on!


Crossover Clusterfuckery




I don’t know why this exists. I don’t know why any of this exists.




Sonic and Crash I can understand, the teenage years is what confuses me, the teenage years where everybody goes sleeveless or wears a trenchcoat. It’s just, I feel embarrassed just looking at this thing, I can’t help it, and I’m pretty sure half of those Bandicoot characters are made up.




Yep.




In case you can’t tell, this is The Brave Little Toaster crossed with Jet Set Radio. I cannot fathom what inspires such things. Also, I didn’t know the toaster was a girl.




Kentucky fried chocobo? Too easy?




Skylanders ain’t looking so bad now, eh?




Two million dead in the first day.

Another seven million by the end of the first week.




Teenage mutant ninja celestial wolf goddesses just doesn’t have the ring to it.




James does not approve of premarital fornication.




I swear, I will devote every fibre of my being to discovering the story behind this picture. All I’ve got so far is that Zach Braff who starred in Scrubs also voiced Chicken Little in both the movie and KH2. It’s not much to go on but we’re going to pull this thread till the sweater unravels.

And there it is. I’M SORRY. If for some reason you haven’t taken enough punishment, a lot of this editions work, along with plenty of awful of non videogame fan art can be found here, so all credit to those guys.

My god it feels like forever since I wrote something, mostly because of this thick slurry of videogames we call October to January, one such game being Dark Souls, a game I have no doubt led to at least one divorce or child beating out of the frustration it can stir in an individual. But it also led me to a revelation about the feeling of true achievement in a game.


There are few feelings greater than destroying everything in your path in a game, like a child going to town on a line of ants with a magnifying glass, sometimes you just want to be a god. But sometimes that can wear thin, sometimes you want a challenge, sometimes you need to feel like you’ve accomplished something, something more tangible than pressing square to wipe out an army, something you feel is within the scope of what the human body can do. And that is where videogames bring forth a sense of true accomplishment for me.



this is the easiest boss in the game......think about that.

Take a game like Shadow of the Colossus for example, at the start of the game you have a sword, a bow, a horse, and your own two hands, and with these four things you are tasked with bringing down sixteen towering creatures. You’ll shoot, stab, climb and ride around these creatures, and with these simple tools you’ll conquer each beast, eventually a sense of unease will settle in with killing each colossi but I’m sure you’ve already read better blogs about that part. But if we think about the actual physical actions Wander performs throughout the game, horse riding, jumping, hanging on for dear life and archery, these are all things an actual person could do, that is why taking down a colossus makes you feel like a literal giant slayer, and maybe why it starts to feel like murder later in the game but, again, better blogs.


Metal Gear is another great example of a game that gives you a thoroughly human protagonist, albeit one at the peak of physical perfection, and pit’s him against otherworldly enemies. Snake, for the most part, uses real world weapons, and real world tactics to overcome the challenges he faces. He doesn’t kick in a door and shoot every motherfucker in the room before deciding to move on and widow the spouse of everyone who get’s in his way, he sneaks, uses misdirection, and avoids confrontation when he can.



When you come up against bosses, they all come with some sort of supernatural power or gimmick you have to work around, be it psychic powers or robot ninjas or a giant man with a gatling gun and a jet engine on his back who shoots ghost ravens out of his forehead so he can freeze you and tell you about how he entered an ear pulling competition in the Eskimo Olympics, I did not make that last part up. But all these opponents must be overcome with little more than ingenuity and a SOCOM, and that is why it feels like an achievement to beat them, you are not in a position of power when you meet these people, a few even have to be ran away from till you have the means to fight them later. And this “Humanisation through gameplay”* has carried throughout the series, with additions like camouflage and eating to keep up stamina constantly reminding you that Snake is still just a man.

* (I’m putting that in quotes because it sounds wanky)


Then we come to Dark Souls, what makes Dark Souls so rewarding is that it treats everything as it would be in that world. If a gigantic suit of armour hit you with an axe bigger than you are, damn right you’d be dead in one hit, and with only the strength of a human you would have to hack away at its legs and hit it about fifty times till it died, and in Dark Souls that is the case. It treats everything with a sense of “realism”, most weapons are believable and behave so, the stronger your attacks the more stamina it takes from you, most enemies can kill you in about three hits, it’s incredibly deep and to explore every aspect would take forever, but it all feels within the realm of what the human body could do. Even magic, when you take it for it is, is a projectile attack that can leave you very vulnerable, it makes it all seems very....reasonable.



What makes Dark Souls special is that as well as treating the player with realism, it treats every abominable monstrosity with that same sense of realism too. Giant sword wielding wolves slash with the strength of...a giant sword wielding wolf, possessed statues are as hard as stone, dragons are near impossible to approach without the right the equipment, to overcome these challenges with a mere human body doing only what the human body can, that bring a satisfaction like no other in gaming. And that is why more games could do with having protagonists that are only human.




Well, that’s that. Bit serious.... I should probably try to go out on a lighter note.....oh, did you ever notice how Cloud’s hair kind of looks like a chocobo’s arsehole?



YOU CANNOT UNSEE!