Recent reviews by { Filet }

Klei: Fix Winona.

You can't make a Rosie the Riveter-style character and then give her mechanics that bog down the rest of the team.

That's just stupid.

(played since closed beta on bethesda net. own champions pack, play frequently with wife hoping this game stops having crap network performance/lootbox-itus)

Originally posted by "Unboxing a crate in TF2":

-need to get a random crate drop
-need to buy a key
-need to know how to both of these things
-have to either pay for key or trade up for them
-use key on crate
-gentle creak sound effect
-small box in your inventory unceremoneously falls open
-you get a thing, and a small text prompt and guitar cord occur
-you probably don't unbox again for months

Originally posted by "Lootboxes in QC":

-every single match ends with you getting stickers and pats on the head regardless of performance
-you are rewarded with freemium currency that slides mystically into your menu hud to the ethereal wooshing of spirits
-you are also rewarded for just logging in because the concurrent player count is sad
-you can open backpacks for free and whatever else you save up your freemium currency to open
-opening anything involves the same sparks, and whistles and wooshing as a casino machine
-the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bejewelled announcer tells you that shader #blue2132432 is rare af even though it's just a colour
-you get conditioned like a stupid hamster pressing a lever opening a handful of these things concurrently
-every time you play you're shovelled into this cycle of pressing these levers and conditioning yourself to play for this addictive mechanic instead of the gameplay
-gg you're a chimp

The same gamers that decry the presence of 'pay-to-win' micro-transaction purchases in their videogames are the same people who decry the presence of social commentary in their games. The implicit idea behind both of these positions is that video games exist as a form of escapism, to not have to contend with these kinds of issues 'for a change'. Wouldn't it be nice if a person from a racial or social minority group could expect to be able to do the same thing within video games? To not be reminded of their under-representation and how their perspectives aren't accounted for when a game is marketed and designed? The white male gamer seems to identify more with the main kind of social stratification they might recognize, which would be economic. A poor-middle class gamer doesn't want to encounter a 'rich' gamer who would be able to effectively bully them out of their fun in virtually every game an 'affluent player demographic' would frequent. No gamer wants any multiplayer game they play to feel like they're up against a boss from Dark Souls (obligatory reference) just because some user with a wingding username dumped a credit card balance into virtual items. This is relatable to most anyone in the gaming community, regardless of personal background. Multiplayer games for most people are a place where people can unwind from a long day or week; Competitive player bases constituting only a minority of most multiplayer gaming communities.

The idea that competition in games is required to be completely on level grounds is novel, but it is also untrue. This idea in conjunction with the escapist needs video games satisfy (for many) constitute two points of a line that this group of players draws between the 'real' world and the contrived worlds of video games. They seem to believe that the two worlds can be completely alienated, with the coincidental exception of economic stratification as a social issue in their games. Prominent speakers in the gaming media community have continually come out and spoke in unison against the presence of pay-to-win scenarios in recent major games releases (Such as EA's NBA2K18, Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Bungee's Destiny 2). From within the community, the syllogism for this seems only obvious and practical:
'If it's not fun, no one's going to want to play it.
So if you allow a pay-to-win scheme, the game will be less fun for most players and thus turn most of them off the game'.

This truth is taken for granted, because it decontextualizes the natural realities of video gaming as an interest. There are financial, technological literacy, cultural, and physical barriers to entry in video gaming as a market, pass-time or culture. And gamers to a certain point don't have a problem with that, a large portion of them appreciate the sense of sub-cultural exclusivity and wear it as an indicator of identity. There has been a crisis of identity in the past handful of years, as an internet culture war plays out into all subcultures of the internet. It wasn't that phenomenon like Gamergate was spontaneous acts of an aggressive subculture to a supposed feminist "agenda" in gaming journalism. The members of the Gamergate community were just haplessly unaware of the social context their movement had been fostered in. To them the "GameJournoPros" Watergate scandal overlooked the revenge content of a post of a scorned ex-partner.
Corruption in the video game industry comes in various forms: Paid reviews (which was the apparent 'larger problem' with Depression Quest being featured in indie game review articles), Advertisement and promotion deals for gaming journalist websites by game developers (Kane & Lynch Scandal covered by Larry Bundy), conflicts of interest between games journalists and game developers, award ceremonies or other business interests, and so on. So while the post detailed that there was indeed collusion between video games journalists and business interests: To the other subcultures of the web who were aware of other games 'scandals' (Drivergate, and so on) for a revenge post of a young man against a woman trying to promote a socially-positive game to be the straw that broke the camel's back, the culture of the movement had chosen a misogynist hill to die on. The corrupt journalists in question didn't need to contrive a false feminist narrative for other media to pick up, that was the honest perception of people who encountered this scandal along with other gaming scandals in the past that hadn't generated such cultural inertia. The profuse debates and conflicts both online and at gaming conventions turned a movement that began as a set of Twitter hashtags into a set of tags for Twitter bots to silence accounts with. This drove gamers toward digging in their heels and identifying 'feminist agendas' as the problematic element used to encourage or pardon corruption in their industry, and with that came the constant derision of 'social justice' perspectives in video games. Even if the bulk of Gamergate-identifying members had been genuinely only interested in using the movement as a means to eye-poke gaming journalism for being corrupt (Such as TotalBiscuit, who took part while fighting cancer), what brought the revenge post to their attention initially were archives and screenshots of bitter mgtow members on 4chan who felt the need to propagate the post because it had been 'censored' on more reputable forums. Because the revenge post had picked up this kind of traction, people introduced to it as a 'smoking gun' piece of evidence were socially-informed of its supposed significance. The idea that journalists aren't allowed to or don't convene or speak to each other because that would somehow warp their profession is unseemly. Almost as unseemly as the accusations made against Quinn in the post itself, that somehow the allure of men who can potentially promote a free indie game was simply irresistible to her. The cultural backlash against Depression Quest for supposedly being the motive for this barely significant instance of corruption was immediate and long-lasting, and came to symbolize the kind of game corrupt videogame media would endorse as a form of political insulation. And with this gigantic unpacking of context, you have the social context of Depression Quest within the 'gaming' community. Its consistent 1.6/10 Metacritic score, overall negative Steam reception consist primarily of political commentary. This is despite a consistent smattering of recommendations for the game from self-reported depression sufferers on both platforms. Taking all of this into account, I wanted to understand the approach Zoey took when creating the game at the heart of a vortex which managed to swallow up the likes of Richard Dawkins, Tim Schafer, and get considered a 'hatewatch' issue by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The profound irony at the heart of all this is that the social issue Depression Quest seeks to address is politically benign. Depression is a mental illness, and like most major categories of mental illness it does not discriminate along a person's social traits. What would the 'agenda' of producing a game that emulates some of the defining features of depression be?
Having just completed a third play-through of the game,
Thoughts:
- The two things I found it did well; incidentally I questioned the deliberate intent behind. I didn't think the game was intentionally funny.
- The character is a negative stereotyping of people with depression. An unlikeable socially anxious, self-absorbed and chronically dishonest person with no sense of tact. Even if you've suffered depression, identifying with this character seems to just signal the self-berating tendencies of depression.
- It's not really a choose-your-own adventure because you rarely ever get presented with a choice.
- The game ends abruptly with a very poor rationale for not writing the game a proper ending.

I bought this because I added my grandma to family sharing
and all she does is lie and say she plays it

I CAN SEE YOU, GRANDMA

Some felt New Vegas was ‘over hyped’, and none will forget its performance issues and game-breaking bugs on release. Likewise, we will also not forget was that it maintained the fundamental structures that kept 3D Fallout New Vegas feeling like a proper RPG, and allowed us to immerse ourselves in spite of the game’s performance.
Then we got Fallout 4, which somehow never gets lambasted with being ‘over hyped’. It also had problems on arrival, and many of us realized that this was not an RPG game like most of the previous Fallout iterations. Our freedom to explore our own stories in the Fallout universe independently had been scrapped in favor of clutching at passé industry trends like base crafting, voiced player dialogue, and tons of fetch questing. After two years of patches and updates it is apparent that the only notable advancements in Fallout 4 have been in the combat, menus, character creator, and companion characters.
I really like the companion characters in Fallout 4, even if they get grating at times with dialogue repeats and inconsistent character traits. In spite of its obvious improvements, the combat system still suffers from that ‘samey’ gunfeel between most weapons. It would do Bethesda good to take advantage of some of the knowledge their ID software properties in this regard, which seem to be the only Bethesda produced titles to not disappoint as of late. Few of the weapons are satisfying, which is comparable to interactions with both companion characters and NPC’s. The shallow feel of the world of repeat line-blurting NPC’s played over repetitively droning bleak background music is underpinned by the ‘synth’ problem. The issue of which members of the commonwealth you interact with being human or not is inconsequential and is pretty much only a part of the story to give it a false sense of depth. Much like the base-building (which can be satisfying); Immersion-wise settlements amounts to little more than a distraction from the gameplay itself and create more false depth. It reminded me of when I stopped playing GTA: San Andreas because eventually the game reduced to ‘one of your hoods is under attack’, pulling Carl Johnson out of his journey only to have to tend to a random fight. FO4 uses this same means of entrapment to waste your time, and while it was incidental in San Andreas (it relents when you take over the whole map area) it is intentional in FO4. Once you stumble upon a settlement it becomes your problem.
If you enjoy The Sims and Minecraft and want to make beautiful hovels for the itinerants of the wasteland (if you can call the Commonwealth a wasteland), you are stepping into a trap of being peppered with alerts and discouraged from discovering new settlements. The only benefit to putting up with this hassle is exploiting the game’s economy, where you can become a purified water tycoon if you keep your populations low and strictly focus on water production in your settlements. This will make ammunition and upgrades easy to access and destroys any sense of in-game scarcity. Two years in and these and other market exploits haven’t been touched by Bethesda and likely won’t because they’re the only reward to induce players into sticking their hands into the settlement system and getting caught, artificially prolonging gameplay.
This is what rubbed me the wrong way the first two years of Fallout 4, even with Bethesda Paid Mods v.3.0™ on the horizon. We all knew Bethesda would try it again for a third time because they know they can bank on enough console players to be naïve enough to not understand how anti-consumer a practice charging for mods is. Prior to this, friends lambasted me for being ‘anti-FO4’, calling me a contrarian hipster. My first bad impressions of Fallout 4 came from the E3 announcement and teasers, which showed us what the beginning of the game would be like. I knew then and there that I would be divorced from my traditional Fallout experience.
You want to be able to treat the game universe as a canvas of your fantasies, and prior to FO4 the Fallout (and Elder Scrolls) games were an amazingly liberal way of doing this. That’s why they became so popular to begin with; the amount of leeway granted to explore your own ideas was staggering.
When I play RPG’s, I create a personal avatar in-game. Not very creative, but it helps with my immersion. I’m the kind of person who can’t quite enjoy a movie or a game if I can see through it, so anything that helps me suspend my skepticism helps. So I liked how every other woman in Fallout 3 and New Vegas looked androgynous. It suited the realism of a wasteland devoid of available makeup. Moira’s mustache was good, because it was indifferent to the aesthetic expectations of a non-Fallout world. Don’t get me wrong, Cait is a great companion to have. But what kind of sense does it make for someone in North America whose lineage descends a couple hundred years since the bomb dropped to have a first-generation Irish accent? It makes about as much sense at it makes for her to have Helena Bonham Carter’s complexion and composition, and this goes double for Piper. If you’ve ever checked out their illustrated character designs in ‘The Art of Fallout 4’ (better than the game itself), you’ll find that something was lost in translation when these female characters were modelled in 3D. Much like the colourful buildings and objects littering the Commonwealth unbleached by two hundred years of sunlight or the waves of radiation supposedly emanating from the Glowing Sea to the south, the women of the commonwealth don’t seem to belong to their universe. Even the ghouls of FO4 get the Maybelline treatment, given essentially ‘smooth skin’, previously a slur in the ghoul vernacular. The Nexus mod community typically known for turning ‘Bethesda butches’ into calendar babes has several popular mods for FO4 that attempt to make ghouls more lore-friendly; Unblackening their corneas, returning to the New Vegas ghoul skin textures, returning ghoul baldness, and giving ghouls back their facial variety instead of looking like blobs of wax. Nexus has also stepped up its game with multinational ethnic character presets and traits, allowing for Japanese, Chinese, Black, Latino, and other diversifications to deepen the cultural aesthetics of the FO4 world. Up until this point in the Fallout series, attempting to make a non-Caucasian character in the character creator was a cringey exercise. In spite of the improvements character creation in FO4, none of these improvements assisted in nonwhite traits. I learned this while trying to create Bjork and Tricky as the ‘couple’ at the beginning of the game. It was easy to create the Scandinavian Icelandic pop artist. It was a nightmare trying to create African-English Massive Attack front man, Tricky.
The reason I was trying to recreate this 90’s music couple and not my own avatar was that I couldn’t. I had to be a heterosexual adult member of a nuclear family marriage, something the bulk of players won’t identify with. This partly served as the basis for the surge in ‘celebrity’ character creations that became popular the week Fallout 4 launched. Many of us weren’t fitting the forced story quite like a glove, so we projected the lack of choice onto celebrity proxies for us to identify with. We couldn’t explore the Fallout universe as ourselves. Even if you’re not gay, a teenager or a spinster, this forced character construct adds to the divorcing of player and experience and was a contrived choice.
So without touching on the ravaging of the perk system, the neutered skill tree system, the bad textures and facial animations, Paid Mods™ #3, and so on, I cannot recommend Fallout 4 to anyone who wanted to play either a Fallout game or an RPG. This game exists as an illustration of the problems of Triple-A 2015-2017 game production: Pure franchise branding hype, tacked-on industry trends, and getting you to pay for what you already own.

This is a very poorly done HD rerelease of a classic RTS that was perfectly fine to begin with.
The optimization sucks, the perfomance sucks, and the game is ancient.

The new DLC sucks, is unbalanced, even the art for it involves shoddy headache-inducing graphical mirroring.
I regret buying this release. I bought it out of guilt for pirating this game in my youth but good god has the honeymoon ended.

My favourite game, neglected into a pathetic and absurd death by an idiot complacent company that allowed Epic and Blizzard to clone and steal billions from them.