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Name: Planetary Shield

Cost: 80 points

Review bit: 
So I got a request to do a review again. Now for the developer and those of you reading this I’ve decided to make this a little different. So while you read this review there’s a drinking game to accompany it.
First get a fairly strong alcohol to make into cocktails and another you can use for shots.
Now every time I say the word broken or unfinished take a drink
Every time I say I raged out, take shot
Every time I mention the game bugged out on me take a drink
Every time I yell an obscenity finish your drink
Simple enough right ?

So Planetary Shield, a game with a fairly simple premise. You play a space station defending the Earth from meteorites.

To start off I feel I should give some positive feedback about the game.....................................um........................................................................give me a minute...............................................................................................I’ll have something in a moment...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... It’s not Zombies Zombie everywhere, that counts right ? What do you mean no, fine I’ll think of another reason.


Yeh I’ve got noth.............. wait I’ve got something, it’s at least a somewhat original idea and not a pong clone.
The problem is Planetary Shield feels like a broken half finished game. There’s ideas there but none of them actually seem to work for the game. It’s so unfinished I really feel I need to fully deconstruct each problem here. The very first problem is the initial language selection, all credit to the developer they are Spanish and yet they managed far better use of the English language than I do here, however when it comes to practical game design decisions it falls down. You see on the language selection screen  the darker option is the one selected, this lead to me actually starting the game in Spanish and having to restart.



So having got over that little hurdle I started playing and my reaction was “What am I playing this game can’t be a finished product” you see while the meteorites look good enough, in motion they seem like placeholder animations that weren’t meant for the final game. Each Meteorite has approximately 8 frames of animation for it rotating, this creates a rather jarring jittery rotation that seems very unnatural and screams “this is a video game” to you.

Next is a slightly broken mechanic which requires you to guide the rescue ships into the green evacuation portal. This sounds fine until you find that the games is missing a certain feature, one which for me is vital, it only works on 16 by 9 TVs not 4 by 3 and there’s no option to set a TV safe zone. Consequently I could not see the green escape portal on the side as the picture expanded beyond the screen as such. This feels like either an oversight or another sign of the game being not quite complete and ready for release. Worse still due to this problem another problem can be found. A problem which lead to me ragequitting the game early on. You see part of the programming requires you to get an escape ship through the portal, once a certain number are through it then brings in the “Boss” and allows you to advance a level. However if you repeatedly fail the get the escape ship out because you can’t see the portal the game keeps going. Due to the design of the game you need to reach level 5 before you can save your progress to pick up again later. With the game not letting you advance until either a certain amount of failed rescue ships go or you manage 1-2 ships passing I managed to get the game to run for 45 minutes and only reach level 2. What this means is the game could run for over an hour and half before you can reach a point to continue from. It’s no secret I enjoy playing DOTA 2 but even that understands games going much beyond an hour in one session are a bit stupid  so by the hour mark it’s normally near the end game. To have a game where it’s possible to get to level 5 in actually only 20 minutes if you play well but being able to stretch that time to over an hour and a half is unacceptable and a sign of an unfinished or broken mechanic.

(If you view the trailer further down you'll be able to see the rescue ship and the gates. On my screen I couldn't see those so it was guess work)





During me first attempt at playing this, before I rage quit. I remembered thinking at the end of the first level “Imagine if there were a boss what would it be in this game ? A Giant Meteorite of course”, can you guess what the boss at the end of each level is ? If you said a Giant Octopus you’d be wrong and rather silly, it is a giant meteorite which takes multiple hits to break up, then each part that’s broken off also takes multiple hits. Well this boss thing is a cool idea except even on the easy early levels by the time it takes enough hits to break up its close enough to pose a threat especially as each part that breaks off takes multiple hits. During later playthroughs I made if further in and you realise how important the use of missiles are in this section, that nicely segways into the subject of the missiles. While a nice idea having missiles as power ups they really do have limited use, not only do you have to actually hit the missile to detonate it but it has its own travel time so you have to not only time the missile to intercept but your own shot to make sure its explodes in time. Due to the speed of the “Boss” rocks it’s very easy to take considerable damage due to a missile arriving too late. The other power ups include healing the defence shield and making the shield invulnerable, the problem is the shield being invulnerable actives on pick up so you can’t simply save it till you’re in trouble this seems at best poorly thought out, at worst broken or unfinished.

On my second attempt at a playthrough on easy I made it to level 6. On level two or three the fairly large rocks get smaller rocks added in and you realise while the previous levels were just passable the strange ever so slight ark on the shots means your aim, until you adapt, is always slightly off so you’ll find you miss a lot. With the smaller rocks your aim being slightly off becomes more of an issue. Level 6 however introduces even smaller faster moving rocks where seemingly if you miss a single shot you will lose. Heck I wonder if even hitting one rock per shot you’d be able to finish the level due to the speed and quantity of rocks. Add to this a very slight issue with hitboxes not working correctly when one rock passes another and the game really does have issues. After 5 attempts at completing level 6 I rage quit again. I have since been back and tried for 30 minutes to pass level 6 I got no further and my reaction was “OK I’ve had about a bloody nough of this game it can go f&%# itself” and I rage quit again.





What my three ragequits highlight is a poor design choice to only allow you to pick up from every 5 levels in. Even playing on easy level 6 was hard for me. Combine that with the potential issue of levels dragging out and what small appeal the game had dies off very quickly as you can’t just play it in short bursts it demands 20 minute minimum up to possible an hour and a half at a time. There may be more to this game that I’m missing but playing as an immovable space station firing energy shots at rocks is a pretty boring game after more than a couple of levels at a time. You can play offline co-op though I’m not sure if that would make the game any better. If the game were to have shorter levels it would be fine or if it let you pick up from any level but the spacing is a huge problem and as such kills any pace.

As I have mentioned I found the slight curve / drop on the shot to be a problem along with other aspects and playing on easy I mentioned I only made it to level 6 and had at least three attempts to pass it before giving up entirely. It’s quite possible the game is merely imbalanced and unfinished being balanced only around co-op play. However it may also be a case of the developer becoming too good at their own game. I mean I was playing on easy mode and being butchered. On the PS2 I’ve finished both Stuntman games even 100% finishing ignition (I’m working on 100% for the 360 version too). I’m not averse to hard games or a challenge, after all I did complete Ravenholm in Half Life 2 without firing a single shot and only using physics objects and the gravity gun. To find a game this hard suggests a real problem especially as the game has 25 levels and level 6 on easy was dong me in. The game does also have a hard mode for the super masochistic amongst my readership who want the gaming experience of playing till their thumbs bleed and only getting 1 level further in.




Now some final complaints to add to this pile. I actually broke the game once, now you might think it’s weird considering I have said before I normally contact developers if I find bugs like this. In this case I’m not because my Spanish isn’t up to much as from the email request for this well let’s just say whoever emailed me was not the person who translated the game so it would probably do little good. I somehow left the game and ended up back at the menu, however the game just locked up and pressing A did nothing on any menu option. I only had it happen once but that bug is there. Finally the death scene is a little long running between 30 seconds and a minute of unskippable cutscene showing the earth being hit and exploding.

Trailer


Verdict: Good now hopefully the developer is too drunk to rage at me because he requested this review and I’ve just torn his game a new one pretty much. Luckily there’s a chance I won’t be raged at as the developers first language is English, unluckily I think at lead the developer or one in the team can translate. So let me say I feel bad for the developer having to read his game being ripped apart here and I did read a translation of the developers website so I do feel bad for stomping on a dream here but just as my dream is to marry Kate Beckingsale sometimes people are always capable of that dream. In this case while I don’t doubt as a development studio that[font=Arial, sans-serif] [/font][font='Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]AxouxereGames[/font] could improve the quality of games in its future titles however I’m reviewing the one presented here.

For being a seemingly unfinished, glitch, unblanaced mess of a game there can only be one result here.

My verdict is to avoid this one like I avoided saying “The only Deep Impact this game left was a negative one”, until now.

Rating:
1/6

Name: Hungry Dinosaur      

Format: Android, reviewed on the Kindle Fire HD

Cost: Free

Review Bit: so who here has heard of or played the game Cut the Rope ?
here, go play a bit of it on Chrome for free because you know, it’s kind of a fun little game

Now you’ve done that let me talk about this blatant rip off of the entire concept in the form of Hungry Dinosaur. 

The game is add supported to make its money rather than microtransaction supported or payed like cut the rope but that doesn’t help the fact the game is absolutely damn awful. The physics engine used doesn’t actually function fully and the levels seemingly haven’t been designed in such a way to compensate for the engine. Consequently some levels I believe are actually impossible to three star. That’s fine though right as the whole idea of cut the rope is not just the three stars but to get a highscore too. Hungry Dinosaur has no high score system, you collect the three stars and that’s it, level done, no reason to go back. So how does this game compensate for the lack of high score systems ? A lot of levels is how. There’s four sections as such each with 25 levels. To unlock the first new area the game claims you need 50 stars. Guess what ? The game lies, you actually need 50 stars and to finish all of the levels in the previous section to carry on and have got 50 stars.

From the first two areas I played which is all I could bring myself to play they take the ideas and mechanics of cut the rope wholesale and then simply adjust the visuals slightly. So the first area is bubbles and spikes the second is instead of air blowers, little fish that blow air. Even the visual styling’s seem copied: the levels seem like they’re set in boxes, the different ones even have the same themed colours found in cut the rope with the first being a brownish box and the second blue.



The games further problems are: that it doesn’t look that great, the ropes look very blurry almost and low quality; the physics engine and previously mentioned doesn’t seem functional to the job; the level design often causes you to have to rely on lucky swings and bounces rather than the sense of a skilled move in Cut the Rope. The games own logic also seems a bit off with instead of sweets you trying to feed the dinosaur meat so why do the spikes break a piece of meat ? Are these ropes the meat is attached to or bungee cords as it bounces up and down ?

Furthering the level design problem is the issue on some levels you’re required to tap or cut a rope near a function button. Now while the kindle fire is quite accurate it does make it hard when you have about 1cm between cutting the right rope and hitting the rest button and resetting the level. One level seeing me reset 5 times by accident due to this.

One final complaint is that while in Cut the Rope the music and sound effects are kind of charming, in Hungry Dinosaurthe sound and music are annoying. I had to trun the music off within 3 levels and the dinosaur sound effects in 6 as the sound effects seem to have been taken from a budget kids dinosaur toy with sound effects.

One last complaint for luck, the game only runs portrait so you can play it landscape no matter how much you want to.


Verdict:  It may be free but I say avoid this as if Time = money this is a waste of your time and therefore your money. Don’t download this app not even to try as I think any add money going to this company would just be going to show support for what is a blatantly unoriginal idea aping a more successful one. If you want to play cut the rope just buy it or play the free Chrome app version. Either is better. 

Rating:
1/6 



 Lep’s world

Format: Android, reviewed on the Kindle Fire HD (game also avaliable on IOS)

Cost: Free Ad supported

Review bit:  So we’ve done a Cut the Rope clone now for the obligatory Mario clone

Ok this game is far less of a clone than others as it does mix up the gameplay a little.

You play Lep who due to a tornado has lost his gold stash so you set out to get it back. Gameplay for the most part is a standard platformer, the difference between this and your standard Mario game being instead of power ups giving you more hits you have a health system. Yes you can take three hits before you die and you restore health by collecting, what else but, shamrocks. The differences from Mario other than the health system are: you can throw pinecones at enemies rather than just jump on them also the enemies that retreat into their shells when hit can’t themselves be used as weapons.



As such there are no real power ups in the game so I personally found levels became stale fairly quick other than the odd automatically running stage. Mostly the difference is the aesthetic of the levels and sometimes slightly different obstacles.

Don’t get me wrong this is a Mario clone game as the aesthetics could have been simply ripped right  from any title. The blocks in game can as you’d expect be smashed by jumping at them with the yellow / organey ones giving items, normally shamrocks. Also the enemy idea of one squishy one that splats when you jump on it and one that goes back into its own shell its very clearly Mario

Other than the whole “It’s a Mario clone” I do have two minor issues and one big issue with the game.
Firstly the controls are place such that as a level ends adverts come up just where the controls were and as such more than once I nearly ended up clicking an advert and opening a new window. The second issue is the controls don’t feel quite as precise as they need to, they feel just ever so slightly floaty leading some deaths feeling unfair. The big issue I have is on a certain level you have to use the pine cones to break through a wall, now while I had plenty of the damn things it’s possible to run out and as such find yourself unable to continue due to previous actions in the game.

Verdict: I’m guessing if you had the beer goggles on you could mistake this for a Mario game. Though in the morning your wake up look over and feel a slight sense of regret over what you did the night before. I’m not going to recommend this game, nor am I going to say it’s a huge broken piece of rubbish to be avoided. Also I hear there is a sequel and that actually might do more things different

Rating:
2/6



Name: MaxAwesome (hey that’s how the title’s written on my Kindle fire)

Format: Android, reviewed on the Kindle Fire HD (Also available on IOS)

Cost: Free, ad and micro transaction supported

Review bit: Joe Danger, a game I’ve never actually played but was apparently a rather underground hit. Turns out it wasn’t a case of putting a attempt at a cute character into Trials HD like I initially thought a long time ago. Anyway with Joe Danger getting a sequel it was inevitable that someone would go and make an Android rip off version of it. Having not played the original I can’t bash this one for how unoriginal the ideas are or how much was lifted wholesale from Joe Danger.

In Max Awesome you play Max Awesome (Durrr) a stuntman, and it’s your job to complete the obstacle course like levels and complete certain objectives on each level. Objectives range from time attacks to collecting certain items or hitting certain targets to stunt score targets. Each completed objective gives you Awesome, yes that’s the currency of this game, I now forgive any developer for just calling their currency Money as this shows how stupid some currency names can be. The Various items in the store can as far as I’m aware all be bought with in game currency, should you wish to work to get it.

What this means instead is I can bash the game on its own rather unfortunate list of failures. However before I do that its time to throw out a good point for the game. The art direction and style isn’t bad. That’s the best you’re getting. No really that’s it.
 

So the bad points, oh my the bad points. Firstly the game is designed to get you to spend money, I’ve played most of Trials HD and got through at least all the Easy and Medium tracks and a good portion of hard getting perfect, I struggled on the first few levels to make the times. The unlockables can cut anything from 0.1 to 1.5 seconds off your time and believe me that makes a huge difference. There are also further items that increase your end of level pay outs and score multipliers for score based levels. Without buying anything the game is quite hard and as you need to progress to get currency to buy things, the game is balanced around getting people to buy something by making the game itself harder and more annoying and full of tedious repetition to get you to simply pay up. Next the game is add supported and Microtransaction supported. I believe you can pay £1 to remove the adverts but why not simply charge for the app...... oh wait less people would pick it up and get so annoyed by the adverts they’d pay that £1 to remove them. The Problem with the adverts is they pop up right before the level starts often you can see the level loaded then suddenly full screen pop up advert for you.

Next the game is mechanically flawed to an extent and the level design actually illustrates these flaws more. Certain parts of the level can find you getting stuck and being unable to continue, other areas have you doing almost blind jumps which on your first play of the level will lead to you being killed.



To put the ass cherry on this turd pie there is a section which sees you race fellow stuntmen, not a multiplayer mode but part of the campaign. So how do you think these would go down ? Some epic race on the track ? Some grand ballet as two stuntman duke it out ? Well I doubt you’d imagine you’d be racing along the level against a cardboard cut out representation of the opponent that bypasses every obstacle and just goes in a straight line to the finish.

Trailer:




Verdict: MaxAwesome is far from it, as such from me I say avoid like everyone somehow avoids knowing of the Taurus stunt awards and mainstream TV avoids every showing them here in the UK. Screw the Oscars I want to see the awards for stunt performers already.  Oh yeh Max Awesome.... it’s a bad game designed to get customers to pay and if I were more familiar with the Joe Danger games I’d probably be far more furious about this one. though at least the game plays better than in the trailer................. yeh that really is the official trailer too. 

Rating
1/6

With the release of two Saints Row IV trailers so far I’ve noticed a rather unnerving reaction by many in the comments. The basic reaction is “This looks stupid GTA V will be far better, this game seems so generic.” “this game looks like it will be shit, it’s so unrealistic.” “Was this game made for 5 year olds ?”
So I feel first I should put the two trailers for you to watch.


 


Now  I started playing Saints Row on 2 and did go back and play the first one. I can see peoples points about why 2 could be considered a better game than 3 as 2 was more structured in gameplay with 3 being more about just pure chaos and the fun of an open world with less of the find these hideouts to take over this area and more about stumbling into gang groups to fight. The other objection levelled at Saints Row 3, which is coming up here again now is that the game is “too silly”.
Now I thought the idea of gaming was fun. I know crazy right but I really thought the idea was to be able to do unrealistic and crazy things as well as you know have stories told and be art and all that.

So I really had to ask myself what this generation could have caused the shift to people hating a game for being silly. It seems for whatever reason this generation’s buzz word is realism or simulated realism where it’s close to reality but not quite real. This is the generation where Timesplitters 4 was being refused by publishers because it wasn’t a Modern Military shooter. Now here are people actually attacking Saints Row 4 for being too silly ? Well isn’t there a place in all media for some things a bit silly ? I mean I love Scott Pilgrim vs the World but its unmistakeably silly is a lot of aspects. I like the Austin Powers films and they are a huge parody of spy films and also very silly. So I can’t see the hatred being poured at Saints Row 4 for being too silly as such, it is pretty much an over the top parody of what GTA used to be.
 
So I started to question if I was missing something here and reading more of the comments I found other things. People comaplianning that the story seemed stupid and a lot of people proclaiming how Saints Row 4 would suck and GTA V would tell a far more epic and engaging story while Saints Row 4 would be “bland and generic”. Now don’t get me wrong I think GTA V will probably try and tell some deep meaningful story of some kind. I however fail to see how that somehow makes a story about the President of the United States running at super speed and kicking aliens in the nads generic and bland. Did I miss the spate of games about super powered Presidents kicking people in the balls ?







So I came to a minor conclusion. That many of the newer people coming to gaming proclaiming GTA V as the holy saviour of crime games might not have been around in gaming that much. Thinking about it coming into gaming people with older brothers and sisters would have heard about GTA and how great it was. I’m not saying it wasn’t great here but I don’t think people can claim one series in a genre shouldn’t exist due to the presence of another. So some of the commenters were stuck with the idea that gritty realism = good so GTA bringing gritty realism was good while not having some grand epic twisted tale of betrayal Saints Row 4 wasn’t as good just on that alone.
 
Now looking back at gaming in the past and some of the things being held up and lorded as amazing works in gaming, such as Dear Esther, have well let’s just say without some people claiming deeper meaning most people would have scoffed them off. I’ve said it before, to me Dear Esther is like someone showing me a Damien Hurst piece and telling me it’s amazing for its super deep grand meaning. It’s a fad. It’s people trying to be more intellectual and simply following on from one person claiming that people won’t understand as its too intellectual for them, hence people start claiming the same to created some shared delusion that they understand and can see some deeper meaning to it. It’s pretty much some of the ideas behind the concept of the Hipster following the popular trend. Personally I’ve been stung by this before as I went to see Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in cinemas in release week due to critics claims of how great it was. I got so bored I fell asleep. I have tried to watch the films since but each time it just bores me. However about a week after I saw a far lower rated film, Dungeons and Dragons. I loved that film and while everyone will mock it, to me it was more enjoyable, yet it was Crouching Tiger that had an insane amount of award nominations when in reality it was a bit naff.  A prime example of the silliness is a sequence that sees the Villain in Crouching Tiger take an enemy out of the fight with a three point nerve paralysis move or later on with a machine gun blowpipe.   


 
Furthering from this in this age of mass appeal gaming, it seems like people can’t simply sit back and realise that maybe a game isn’t for them. I know someone will suggest the same for Crouching Tiger and me but I actually like martial arts films and even love a film that was oddly overlooked but to me far superior in the form of House of Flying Daggers. I’m not someone who goes to the cinema to see “[insert genre here] Movie” parodies anymore since after Scary Movie 3 I felt they went down hill and no longer appealed to me but I’m not yelling about how I want them to do only the kind of humour I enjoy. I get the films aren’t aimed at me. Yet with so many companies trying to make games for everyone some gamers seemingly feel if a game isn’t tailored to what they want, in Saints Row 4’s case a gang warfare game like GTA without much if any wackiness, then there must be something wrong. This really does go back to the point raised in the Jimquisition “Perfect Pasta Sauce”. People are different so different games are fine, the problem being now people don’t seem to realise this as every publisher seems to want to make their game for as large an audience as possible so the perception of “If it doesn’t appeal to me somethings wrong” has somehow started to prosper and is being seen now with the comments about Saints Row 4.
 
So what I have to say to those calling Saints Row 4 a failure already is this. A game doesn’t need some grand epic story to be worth making, games are entertainment, fun things, so stop complaining that everything is not super serious and deep. Oh and finally stop being so pretentious and hold this dildo bat already, who knows you might enjoy it, so  acting as though the game won’t be fun it isn’t impressing anyone and won’t make you seem more intellectual. 

Personally I’ve seen a fair few films considered intellectual in content, from The Girl series to Hard Candy to Romeo and Juliet, I’ve seen some plays performed and even seen and appreciated a musical, yet I can happily say I also enjoy far less intellectual but to me equally entertaining films such as Flash Gordon or XXX (not the sequel so much though unfortunately). So can we please take the Hipster glasses off and just let games just be what they want without some need for deeper meaning, that’s not to say games with deeper meaning shouldn’t happen but not every game needs one to be allowed to exist.

So looking at the success of the Wii and the issues the Wii U is facing I have to question if it’s not so much super high AAA quality games that can make a system sell but actually shovelware and a strange situation in gaming I like to call the golden turd principal.
 
The idea behind the golden turd principal is that a publisher gets approached by a developer with a game concept or nearly made product. The publisher, rather than turning the game into some AAA level masterpiece pretty much says “Yeh we’ll publish it for you if we can publish it as is cause we don’t think it’s worth paying more for.” So the Publisher sends then game out expecting to make minimal profits but hey they often get the IP rights out of it and might make some money. The game gets a budget price, very little advertising and is essentially released to die. The golden turd principal is that out of all that shovelware somehow the developer has made something far better than anyone expected. It’s rare and many games can said to have been buried but it can happen. The best example of this is the budget PS2 game Gungrave. A game I bought for £15 ($23) brand new in the week it released. I had heard nothing of it and it had ended up in the budget games section of my local store. Not many of you probably have heard of Gungrave but this was a budget game that spawned not only a sequel (Also released at a budget price of £20) but also a full anime series due to it doing so much better than expected. In more recent times there was a PS2 budget game which got updated and changed a bit and became Earth Defence Force 2017 on Xbox 360. Earth Defence Force has a sequel and already apparently a 2[sup]nd[/sup] sequel in the works. Sure these aren’t often big enough to be system sellers but they add enough to the library to make the system appear worth buying as it had good titles, not great but good.


 
Shovelware is a great thing for consumers as while it might appear to be a terrible cash grab it’s actually a subtle way for developers to test new features and ideas out without the need for AAA sales. Dead Space as a light gun game, sure why not ? How do we get this mechanic to work or how can we do this in game ? Let’s just make a game and find out if it works.
 
Yes the perception of shovelware is low quality crap and I’m not going to argue against that as most of it is but it has a purpose to exist. It fills shelves and filled shelves in brick and mortar stores means more space dedicated to one console and as such people will be more willing to consider the console due to the visual display of how large its library is. I know people aren’t believing me so I put forwards two of the consoles with the most shovelware in the past. The Wii this generation and the PS2 last generation, both runaway successes, both filled with shovelware. Now what consoles were considered failures ? The Gamecube with its lack of titles, the Dreamcast due to no perceived 3[sup]rd[/sup] party support. Both those consoles it has to be said have fairly lean libraries of games, mostly all quite good games in themselves but there’s very little shovelware. Now think, as a parent, you’re not a gamer anymore, never have been. You’re getting little Timmy his first console to keep him quiet and give him some entertainment that you can possible also play too. Which is more appealing, the console with a little section by the door or the one with three shelving sections worth of games ? Which will keep little Timmy occupied longer / be able to provide more for him ? It sounds mad but this is the logic some parents will have with gaming, they will want to buy what they see as the best console or the one capable of providing most entertainment, that is if little Timmy hasn’t asked for a specific console.
 





So in short Nintendo needs Shovelware to allow new developments, to give it the shelf dominance it needs and to create the illusion of support for the product which in turns can have other companies actually supporting it.
 
The big question is with the more open policy for indie game developers, can Nintendo get downloadable shovelware made, on their system and working for them or will they still needs the 3[sup]rd[/sup] parties to do retail shovelware ? If this is the age where digital is going to take over as people keep suggesting, is Shovelware even important now , as due to separate online stores for each console you don’t compare libraries but a company can claim “We have X many games available to download” ? Finally could shovelware be in part the solution to the present AAA problems ? With companies closing studios due to low sales and seemingly reliant on the big runaway hits rather than the less immediately profitable but more certain profitability of shovelware which needs to sell less to be making the publisher money though will probably make less potentially than one huge AAA hit.

Now a few of you may follow me on twitter and might have seen a fairly recent very civilised discussion I entered into in part with Jim Sterling, some-one whom I do have respect for though don’t always totally agree with. Part of it was about the idea of true equal rights. The interesting point brought up was about special treatment. For those who want to call it another name, Positive sexism. It’s still sexism and wrong, it can be seen as equally damaging to Womens’ rights as negative sexism. It should not be tolerated was the point raised.

So once again I step worryingly into another debate about sexism. Sorry for those who have read my previous blogs and advised me to steer clear of it as I’ve been steering as clear as I can without being sucked back in. I honestly have I mean I managed one bit recently and that was actually pointing out something I felt was sexist to a fair degree. Well it turns out as much as I’ve been trying to avoid the sexism in gaming topic until Tropes vs Women in video game put out the second part of Damsels in Distress. Yet it appear while I may be ready to let the topic rest, the topic is not allowed to let me rest.
 
I got called sexist again recently. What for you might ask ? Well, I and 4 other people in a team game got labelled as retards. In a Moba game, this match in-fact.


  
Now the eagle eyed amongst you might have noticed one name is blurred out here. This is so I can do this rant and not be called out for attacking someone, or being mean to them , or calling for mobs to hunt them down.
 
So how did me defending 4 other people in the team lead to me being labelled as a sexist and threatened with being banned ?
 
Well amongst the team was a streamer, who proudly as many streamers do said they were streaming, I missed a fair bit of the pre lobby discussion so I grapsed the whole oh they stream thing from what was being said. I have a thing I do because I find it funny as Streamers normally in control of everything don’t get to control me. I tell really terrible jokes throughout the match, I mean the very terrible ones which as I was playing as the Goddess of Love, well they were just lovely......... hey I said they were terrible. Now the streamer went in the other lane to me, throughout the match said streamer spent most of the time in the jungle and not in the lane. I looked 7-8 times early game and that lane had exactly one person in it. Consequently the lane was fairly quickly lost and by about five minutes it had given the enemy 4 kills. That’s somehow not just the person in the lane but the streamer. So people told them to get back into lane and to watch chat for missing calls etc. Said streamer then said “I’m not paying attention to chat because you’re all being mean to me”. 

At this point only the streamers lane partner was throwing insults and with fairly legitimate reason. When you’re being left to solo a lane by partner who has run off to do their own thing, well it’s a little annoying as you have to work far harder to keep the lane and the general idea is your partner jumps in the lane to help or switch and tries to only leave when they can. This caused many including myself on the team to tell them to watch chat and we’re not being mean just trying to stop us losing the match as it’s a team game so chat is rather important. The game went down hill with left lane losing completely enough that the enemy could just move across from one lane to the next without fear of losing it and just snowball the game. Said Streamer was still running round the jungle trying to earn easy gold. After a few team fights it was over and we’d lost. The parting words from the streamer “We lost because all of you are retarded” then they left the lobby, no gg to the enemy no waiting round for the customary dishing out of the blame.
 
Now I was a little annoyed at this and knowing they were a streamer I put their in game name in, because hell streamers are meant to promote some positivity in the community, by chance I found them. So type into the chat “What the hell, no gg to the enemy that’s bad sportsmanship, oh and maybe it would have helped if you’d listened to us ‘retards’ and not spend the whole game out of lane.” Turns out the streamer was a female, the response I got “You’re only attacking me because I’m a girl, stop being sexist you misogynistic pig or I’ll have you banned.” No really that was the response, the argument then went on as follows, bearing in mind I was in twitch chat here with some very hostile fans whos streamer I’d just called out for insulting people and poor sportsmanship.

Me “How am I being sexist”

Her “Well you were being all sexist to me in game”

Me “Was I ? I was telling very poor quality puns but none actively aimed at you or deliberately sexist, tell me one that was sexist ?”

Her “Well you knew I was a girl and streaming so you were horrible to me all match, you and the other retards on the team”

Me “How did I know you were female ? I saw a username and nothing else until now, I acted the same to you as anyone else in game or any other person who proclaims how they’re streaming the match.”

Her “I told everyone my stream URL and you looked”

Me “I wasn’t even there in the early lobby so I saw now URL. So how again was I sexist to you ?”

Her “You know how, you’ve already said so, I don’t need to tell you, you just were.”

Me “No I said I was telling groan worthy jokes, I am legitimately asking how I was being sexist now ? Also calling people in game retards for asking you to play as a part of a team not run off doing you own thing isn’t a great way to act”

Her “You were being SEXIST ! What the fuck am I supposed to do about calling you guys retards”

Me “Again please tell me when / how I was being sexist. A quick I’m sorry on stream will suffice for the retard comment”
Random person “Actually he has a point I never saw him say anything sexist to you in game”

*Random person has been silenced*

Her “Ok Kodu I’m going to have you banned from Smite for this, enjoy that. Maybe when you’re ready to apologise I’ll get your ban overturned on Smite and here, you’ll have to PM me an apology on her before I even consider it though and tell me what I did wrong.”

Me “Wait what am I being banned for ?”

Her “Being a sexist asshole and attacking me in Smite an here in the stream. People shouldn’t tolerate your kind about and I’ll be happy to see you banned”

Me “So I’m being banned for coming on here pointing out to you that the guys you called retards weren’t as it was you who messed up. Now you’re claiming that confronting you with this is sexist because you’re female ?”

*Kodu has been banned from this chat, his messages have been removed*

Her “you’ll have to PM me an apologise if you ever want to play again, guys in chat if you see this asshole in game again before he’s banned troll the shit out of him and keep reporting him”

So you know what I did, I PMed her, here’s my PM

 
[color=black][size=1][font=Helvetica, sans-serif][i]as you said you were refusing to listen to me in channel chat. 

First if you're going to accuse me of being outright sexist against you I'd like to know what you're basing these accusations on. 

You claimed I said I admitted to it yet I've done no such thing. 

Secondly as you were blaming everyone else in the team for the loss to use your words we we're all "retards" I'd like to put it to you that maybe you also made errors. 
One such one being the lack of time in your own lane, when I checked and admittedly it wasn't often but most of the time you seemed to be in the jungle. 
Next you didn't apologise for the apparent KS to Xbala, I know a kill is a kill but if he felt it was his kill its polite to apologise to him for it. 
The strange fact while 4-5 on one you didn't retreat but hunted the kill also didn't help matters. 

Before you say I'm attacking you for being female, I'm not, you asked for this you actually asked me to point out what you did that contributed to the loss. 
I'm fully aware of what I personally did wrong that match and my own mistakes in positioning and activation and I accept these. We lost as a team unit. from my perspective I saw your lane falling, while in mine we weren't. Infact in my own lane we were slowly winning. however the kill disparity from your lane allowed the enemy to take the advantage. 

By not listening to chat at all during the match you missed potential teamwork opportunities and warnings about attacks incoming. 

I am by no means claiming to be some expert at Smite and worryingly that was my first ever Ranked match so make of that as you will. Again for clarity you asked me to PM you saying what I felt you did wrong, I am NOT blaming you entirely for the loss, I am merely defending the rest of the the team who you claimed lost the match due to being retarded. 

I'm dropping you this PM as you asked me to, however I fear it most likely not what you were hoping for as I am not here begging for forgiveness for some imagined crime, nor asking to be unbanned. 
If you decide to unban me then so be it however to have been banned from defending myself and my team mates in chat with you badmouthing them, I find extremely poor behaviour and a rather horrible form of censorship. 

I honestly expect no reply to this PM though if you wish to send one by all means do as I would truly like to know how I was being sexist to you just by seeing a username, or how you were completely blameless in the loss in a team game. 

Also before its said, I did not see chat for an early part of the lobby. I didn't see you plug your twitch, I didn't see any alleged harassment, as you're claiming that's why you ignored chat so I have no idea what went on for part of the early lobby time. The way I found your twitch was a simple google of your username.[/i][/font][/size][/color]
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Suffice to say I’ve had no reply to it as expected. Also I’m not banned on Smite or believe me this would be far more of a rant.
 
Now you might have read some of my previous blogs and remember a story I told about getting hell from a game of Red Faction for refusing to go along with a team mates plan when I thought it was stupid. I got hell because as it turns out it wasn’t some 13 year old gobshite but a girl gamer complete with entourage of doting males who too any disagreement as a personal attack.
 
So that’s two incidents right, surely I wouldn’t have a third such thing, right ?
Wrong. I got attacked again for apparently being sexist in a video game.
 
So the story begins with me starting out in The Secret World, because I was in the Beta and now its subscription less I thought “Hey let’s try and get into an MMO again”. 



Everything was fine I was grinding well as a Templar until I reached an area where a simple puzzle is used. If you get one thing wrong in the puzzle it summons a mini boss monster that you have to fight. 

So I’d been there a while when another player comes up. Being an open area other people can also be doing the same quest as you and often you’ll find an overlap even if you aren’t sharing the same mission you can and often do end up helping one another out. I paid little attention to them until Fizz, bang they messed up and summoned a boss monster. Me seeing them and realising they were a significantly lower power than me and I was struggling with the boss monsters myself even at my level I thought I’d do the friendly thing and help them out. So I fired on the monster to get its attention and expected any moment the other person to jump in so we could decimate the boss. Only it didn’t happen, they continued to stand there doing nothing. They then managed to attract some other monster. I thought it would be fine they’d come and help me now they were being involved in a fight. So I lay down an area of effect on the boss and what does the other person do but run with their monsters chasing right through the area meaning the monsters turn on me.


So I now have a boss monster I can barely beat and two normal monsters on me. Did they join in ? No, they went right back to the puzzle. I made it through by the skin of my teeth and walked back over to the puzzle healing back up from about 4 health. So I thought “hhhmm looks like they aren’t going to help me” and with a fizz and bang they failed the puzzle again. So I thought “Maybe them being killed would be a lesson to them” and I stepped far back and watched the boss they summoned rip them apart.
 
With them gone I started back on the puzzle and was getting to near done. They resurrected back up next to me and with a fizz and a bang I failed the puzzle and summoned a boss monster. At the same time as me fighting the boss in the public general chat the following happened.

Other player “Hey Kodu is a real douchebag, no-one group with him ok”

Other player “you hear that you douchebag I’m letting everyone know how bad you are you’ll be ostracised from this games community”

Other Player “This is for flooding the market you douchebag”

Other Player  “Say sorry now and I won’t have you ostracised”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond you douchebag piece of shit”

Kodu “kind of busy here fighting a boss can this wait”

Other Player “no Respond now”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”

Other Player “Respond”
 
I defeated the boss and was finally able to talk in chat and I wish I’d recoded the chat for this as it proves the issue all too well.

The gist of it went like this

Me “So what’s your damn problem then”

Other Player “you are you left me to die on that boss monster”

Me “Well you did the same to me when I was helping with the boss you summoned before”

Other player “So ?”

Me “Well If you’re not going to help me when its actually only to help you then why should I bother ?”

Other player “You’re a douche you know that”

Me “Why  ?”

Other player “For not responding when I commanded you too”

Me “I was kinda busy, you know fighting that boss and everything, I’m really sorry I didn’t stop fighting and die just so I could be at the beck and call of someone attacking me in the public chat channel”

Other Player “you should have responded”

Me “I was busy and also what the fuck are you on about flooding the market”

Other player “By being a douche”

Me “that makes no damn sense how is that flooding the market ?”

Other Player “By being a douche to me just because I’m female, there’s so many MMOs out there and so many guys are douches in them to girl players, I thought here was different and I’d be able to have fun but no there’s players like you being misogynistic pigs to girls like me who want to play them. You’re flooding the market with douchebaggery”

Me “That’s not what flooding the market means. Also you were the one who left me to die then began attacking me in the general chat channel for not answering you the moment you asked something”

Other player “Well that’s what you’re supposed to do you know. Help me with my quests and be there for me, and give me some decent armour, not leave me to die against a boss like that”

Me “It was a boss you’d summoned by failing the puzzle by rights it was your boss, like the first one I fought trying to help and nearly died doing it”

Other player “I didn’t summon the boss”

High level other player “Actually you did as if you mess up on that quest it auto summons one”

Me “And I didn’t touch anything when those bosses showed up”

Other player “It’s so unfair, you’re upsetting me so much here you don’t even know because you’re such a douche fuck you I’m off you giant asshole I hope you die”
 


Now you might think that would be the end of this but oh no I spotted the same person in general chat only 30 minutes later and again there was drama.
 
Other player let’s call her H to make this easier and the person arguing being M

H “Anyone got any spare gear or cash to give to a girl just starting out in this game”

M “Earn it yourself already”

H “That’s not very nice, you’re supposed to help girls out”

M “Why ?”

H “Because that’s what people who aren’t douchebags do”

M “And people with a backbone will tell you to earn it yourself and stop begging in the 
public chat channel, no-one cares about giving you free stuff”

H “Stop being such a mean douchebag to me, just because I’m a girl”

M “No I’m telling you to earn your own damn stuff”

Other girl “Look missy kindly fuck off with your attitude, I’ve had enough of you in chat today, I’m a girl who plays this game and you know what, I never went looking round for hand outs and I never tried to guilt people into things by making them feel they were being sexist if they didn’t. You are what is causing so many people to not like girl gamers, you and your stupid entitled attitude and the reason until now I’ve never even said I’m female in this game because I didn’t want people to think I was using it to get help. I wanted and have got to where I am in this game on my own”

H “I bet you’re not female, I bet you’re just some fat guy in his Moms basement pretending to be female to get some sick perverted kick out of it, because if you were female you’d know you should be trying to get people to help you and having people in these kind of games give you all the free stuff you can get.”
 
I actually left the zone at that point as I really couldn’t stand to put up with this person even in the same chat anymore.

Its actually something apparently seen in MMO's the idea of people playing female characters and pretending to be female to get help or advantages this way, no really.


 
So what’s the point of this rant like article ?


Well firstly to highlight blatant sexism, yes sexism by claiming that because you’re female you deserve special treatment. That’s sexism. This while [u]rare[/u] is in part why sometimes there is some resentment when people proudly proclaim “I’m a gamer girl” because while very rare its sometimes followed by “You should give me shit because otherwise you’re sexist” Now don’t get me wrong I’ve posted about Male gamers who were complete twats before too so to suggest not all girl gamers are complete angels is at least to me fair to say.



Secondly it’s to highlight how calling something sexist is being used as a means of easy attack which seemingly requires little to no justification to use but requires a lot to defend against it. The problem with this being it’s the boy who cried wolf. Eventually due to people claiming something is Sexist as a way to create negativity about it or to justify why people should be against it, when in reality the thing isn’t sexist. Calling something sexist begins to lose all meaning and people won’t pay attention to actually sexist things. Sexism really should be considered like many of the other big claims to throw out in gaming as its almost a nuclear warhead of a claim where to fight against it is damn tough but in the end no-one wins if it turns out the claim was wrong.

For example claiming that all games studios aren’t 50% male 50% female is proof videogaming is sexist has been hinted before. The problem being when you examine the situation fully you find that many computer science courses at best are managing 1/3 of their applicants as female, with many managing actually no female applicants at all. Then you have to ask again that if all games studios don’t have 50% women is its sexist when women only make up 33% at best of the graduates in this area ? People can still suggest the industry is sexist the problem is people then have to point to it beyond “Women don’t want to go into it” well then why ? Tell me why ?
 
Now you might be asking why on earth I’ve gone off on this huge rant here well people already acknowledge there are assholes in gaming the perception is normally that they’re all dudes. The truth is both genders are equally capable of being assholes and I really haven’t seen anyone talk about this before, because shock horror “someone claiming women are capable of malice just like men, obviously we must burn this misogynistic pig and brand him with our swords as we defend the honour of fair maiden”. Yeh, I have no doubt this could upset some people however I wanted to write this and point out that we’re all just gamers in the end and none of us are special snowflakes who should always have the right to get their own way.
 

So I’ll leave you with one final thought and question. With female only gaming clans such as the Frag dolls springing up, is it a negative thing to actively segregate female gamers in such a way to avoid some of the populous or is there a legitimate need for them as female gamers can’t be part of normal clans as such ?


 
 I’m an equal opportunities asshole personally, I don’t care who you are if you start throwing insults I’ll more than happily return some of my own and I have no idea nor care if you’re: yellow, green or blue ; human, alien, robot, cyborg or hybrid the insult won’t be directed specifically to those characteristics nor will I single you out for them as I don’t honestly know that information.