Hatesgiving.

So I heard Thanksgiving is this week in Americaland. I was going to write a blog about things in games I’m thankful for but then I realised that would be a bad idea because

(a) I really like games and I would go on forever.
(b) I’ve never celebrated Thanksgiving before and don’t know what it is (it’s about you guys committing genocide or something right?)
(c) Its more fun to be a dick and complain anyway.

So with that in mind I set out to write about things that we shouldn’t be thankful for, things that we should in fact hate and get rid of in gaming. And that’s how Hatesgiving was born. A time for us to moan and whinge about all the little things that annoy us, no matter how stupid or immature our reasons are, and without rebuttal or debate. It’s kind of like Rapture, only instead of a city under the sea, it’s a holiday I made up. So in the spirit of acting like an ungrateful complainy-pants, let us order take-away, isolate ourselves from our family and grumble about things we don’t like.

Unpauseable cut scenes.



The cut scene. A way to get in a bit of story, a chance for a breather, a little reward for a job well done, everybody loves a cut scene. But how many times has this happened to you? You’re enjoying a cut scene, cool things are happening, important plot points are brought up and just as things get interesting....... BAM! Your phone rings, there’s a knock at the door, someone interrupts you asking where they left their keys. Your left with two options, you can either half listen to the person, keeping one eye on the screen, and have them feel ignored, or you can skip it, and thanks to the magic that is auto-save you spend the rest of the game wondering what happened and confused as to how you ended up fighting a giant spider on the roof of a church. Is it that hard to make cut scenes pauseable? Uncharted and Metal Gear did it.

Literal brown town.

Please for the love of God stop using brown and grey as the only colours games. Where this idea that brown and grey makes a game look realistic come from? The real world isn’t like that, in fact just take five seconds and look out the nearest window right now, don’t worry, I’ll wait..............finished? Good, now did you see that? Did you see the blue sky and the green grass and the yellow sun? Just take a short walk and you’ll find a symphony of colour assaulting your eyes. And while I’m on this rant I might as well mention lens flare. Why is there lens flare when I look at the sun in games when there isn’t even a real camera?

Magic magazines.

You know, when you fire a few shots from your gun and when you reload all the bullets in the clip are still added to your total. I always thought it would be a much more tense experience to know that every bullet counts. Wouldn’t it be an interesting mechanic to have to make tactical decisions like wasting ammo for the security of a fully loaded gun or saving ammo at the cost of risking a reload in the middle of battle?

American accents in Fantasyland.

Ok, now I can understand why this happens, most games are made or translated by Americans so naturally there’s going to be some accents here and there and most of the time it works. But when a game is set in some fantasy setting it’s just confusing and takes you out of it, or there are the cases of games that go to great lengths to make the world feel real and unique, and the main character will still have an American accent which is even more jarring. Seriously, why does the prince of Persia have an American accent.

Amnesia.



Oh amnesia, where would lazy writers be without you? Amnesia is a special plot device that writers use when they don’t want characters to be interesting or developed, it’s the reason they have no personality and it’s an excuse to teach the killing machine your playing as how to jump . It can also be used for a big reveal where you learn that you worked for the bad guys before your bump on the noggin or that one of the other characters is actually your secret relative. Which brings me to...............

Secret relatives.



Maybe it was fresh and original when we found out that Darth Vader was Luke’s Dad but surely this has been done to death by now. From Golbez to Liquid Snake to Andrew Ryan this has happened in games so many times that it’s almost at the point of self parody (in fact I think it was parodied in No More Heroes). The thing I don’t understand is why does it matter? Is it just drama for dramas sake? If someone was trying to kill you, made your life a living hell or interfered with your mission every step of the way, wouldn’t you want to beat the life out of them? If you found out they were your twin wouldn’t you still want punch them right in their stupid identical face?

Floaty sticky back swords.



Alright, at first this was just one of those little things that bothered me a little bit, but as time goes on the more I see it the more it winds me up. I’m talking of course about floaty sticky back swords. For those of you that don’t know floaty sticky back swords are the weapons that magically float or stick to your characters back completely unassisted by any type of sheath or holster. There are theories as to how these weapons stay afloat, such as, the same invisible force that holds Cloud hair in place also holds his sword, Dante’s weapons are held on his back by sheer awesomeness, and the ever popular hypothesis of Nathan Drake and his magnetic spine. Yes this is finicky infantile nit-picking but that’s what Hatesgiving is all about

Phew, there we go. Childish self-indulgent rant over. I may not understand Thanksgiving but I still want you guys to have a good time, and if any of the stuff above is your biggest problem, then you really do have a lot to be thankful for. So join in on the Hatesgiving festivities and air your grievances below, don’t worry, we won’t judge.