GameBabble Game of the Year 2017 and my History with Animation!

Well surprise surprise my “update every day” plan fell apart in a week. Certainly there is a fine balance between blogging with no plan and planning forever and never publishing.

ANYWAY! The radio show is on hold for a bit longer as the next semester starts up and people get their classes together. BUT! GameBabble continues with two quickly cobbled together episode-ish things!

 

First, GAME OF THE YEAR 2017

(I’m so good at drawing hands)

Yes! 2017 was quite the year for games so lets talk about what wowed me the most this year!

 

On top of that though we have a random rambly VLOG turned almost-episode because I spent too much time editing it wherin I talk about my weird journey with animation: How I started as an anime fan in the 80s, boycotted Disney in the 90s, and rediscovered the west in the 2000s:

(I had blonde hair as a kid)

Enjoy and fingers crossed I remember this blog exists sooner!

Thanksgiving: Thank You VR Community

So it’s Thanksgiving and I’m sure we all have a ton of REAL stuff to be thankful for: our health, our families, the food on the table.

But today I’d like to say Thank You to the VR community.

Just last year, after a nearly 20 year absence, Virtual Reality made a comeback and after recieving the PlayStation VR as a Christmas gift I am convinced that while standard screen and controller gaming will NEVER go away and never should, Virtual Reality is absolutely “the future”.

…unfortunately that future is still 2 or 3 years away (I’m thinking next console generation).

Look, the technology is THERE and it works shockingly well. Can it be improved? Sure, but for the most part that’s not necessary. Rather, VR has 3 main hurdles to overcome:

1 – Price is Too High

2 – Not Enough Games

3 – Motion Sickness

I’ve heard more than a few people suggest just putting the whole thing back in the box and waiting another decade or so. That is the worst idea. See, back in the 90s when we quit making VR headsets, guess what? The prices for headsets were between $500-$1000. When we picked back up again in 2016, guess what the price of headsets were? $500-$1000. The price stagnated. Why? Because no one was making VR headsets. The technology hadn’t been dusted off and refined in a while, there was no demand for certain specialty parts, and the production pipeline had not yet been refined. If we stop making VR right now? It will be the same deal.

No, we need to push ahead. The more VR headsets we make, the more we can refine the technology, smooth out the production pipeline, and offer higher quality headsets at a lower price. But in order to do that, we need guinea pigs. We need people who can’t wait and just gotta have a VR headset even though there’s “nothing” on it. As such…

 

THANK YOU, VR COMMUNITY!

Thank you for taking a risk. Thank you for buying headsets at a rather high price so you could be one of the first. Thank you for toughing it out through these early days of VR when many games are more mini-game than real game. Thank you for providing feedback to developers and helping unravel the mysteries of how to do VR right.

Without consumers there is no point in producing product. Why make VR games if no one will buy them? So you being there and supporting these games and developers in this most experimental time is giving headset producers a reason to keep making headsets and giving game devs a reason to experiment with VR.

VR community? YOU are bringing down the price of VR.

Which brings us to…

 

THANK YOU, VR GAME DEVS!

Egad I can’t believe you all are really doing this. Right now, VR is a big risk. Though it has an “okay” install base with something around 1.5 to 2 million PSVRs sold worldwide making it one of the best selling peripherals of all time, we’re still not talking about that many players. AAA games pretty much bank on selling 3 million units minimum and aim for closer to 5 million. With less than 2 million PSVRs in the wild, AAA game studios do not see the point in even ATTEMPTING VR.

But you, you crazy indie devs with a dream, you’re doing it. I totally get it too: You tried VR, you’re hooked, and you wanna contribute to it. You don’t wanna let something with this much potential die off just because no one was making games for it. So you contributed, you helped add just a few more games to the pile and now the PSVR, the most curated of all VR platforms, has well over 100 games in just one year.

I think that’s the most amazing thing people forget: ONE YEAR. We have had VR for ONE YEAR. It’s easy to forget considering we’ve been hearing about the Occulus for YEARS but that was the beta version. The actual consumer grade Occulus Rift, alone with the Vive and PSVR, came out only one year ago. We have had ONE YEAR of this new age of consumer grade VR and we already have over 100 games on its most curated platform and FAR more on Steam. We’ve already come so far. VR is quickly clawing its way out of the tech demo and mini-game ghetto and real meaty games are showing up.

Raw Data in particular is incredible, FFXV: Monster of the Deep is a real full fishing game, and Skyrim VR is…well…all of Skyrim in VR (and with improved combat which turns the game from something I hated into something I actually ENJOY). I’ve already spoken at length about how much I like Mortal Blitz, though the full game could use more varied environments. Sparc, meanwhile, perfectly realizes and explains why motion controls have so much potential by being a legit SPORT in virtual reality. Now Rec Room is providing a social sandbox for every VR owner to have fun together in for free. Resident Evil 7 showed how it’s possible to add VR support to a AAA game and Far Point gave us a taste of what a AAA first person shooter in VR would be like. Korix showed how far one man’s dream can go.

…and StarBlood Arena shows the tenacity of a single developer to try and keep a dream alive. Egad, Whitemoon Dreams, are you all okay?

What’s even more amazing, however, is how VR game devs keep showing up on Reddit and talking with the community! From update blogs, to listening to requests and patching in features. Raw Data wouldn’t be anywhere near the game it is now if the developers hadn’t patched in a smooth movement option and smooth turning is now promised for Skyrim VR. Not to mention Ancient Amuletor now has a left handed option thanks to developers listening to fan complaints. In these early days of VR, patching has never been more important. You never know when a design decision that sounds great on paper utterly ruins the game for half of your audience.

So thank you VR game devs. Thank you for taking a risk on VR and thank you for listening to your consumers and patching your games to accommodate.

VR game devs? YOU are making “enough games” for VR.

 

But there’s one last group of people I need to thank:

 

THANK YOU DETERMINED PEOPLE WITH MOTION SICKNESS!

I don’t know any other way to put it. I’m lucky, no game in VR has made me really motion sick, but I showed the PSVR to a friend and he instantly got ill with a single step. Motion sickness in VR is not to be taken lightly, but you all have shown that it CAN be overcome!

See, this is where we need more help: We need more researchers studying what makes people sick in VR and the best ways to avoid it. I know some research has been done and I thank those researchers, but more is clearly still necessary.

But while all of that is going on, the personal experiences and anecdotes provided by motion sickness sufferers on Reddit have helped shed light on VR’s most complex, confusing, and definitive problem.

According to the tales I hear, Dramamine CAN be used to overcome motion sickness in VR but of course you do NOT want to be taking medicine just to play videogames every time. Thankfully, prolonged exposure to VR eventually gives people their “VR Legs” and it stops bothering them. But how do you tolerate VR while it makes you sick? Well that’s apparently a combination of playing good stationary and teleport movement based games and…chewing on ginger candies?

Apparently you just chillax in virtual reality, standing in one place, until eventually it just stops bothering you and you can move smoothly in it? I admit I do not know the full details.

The interesting thing is that all of these people tell different stories about what aspects of VR make them sick, which games make them sick, and so on. It really shows how individualized the motion sickness problem is and going forward, a full suite of VR comfort options will need to be necessary both to turn ON for those with problems and to turn OFF once everyone gets their VR legs.

But either way, thankyou for your determination in sticking with VR even though it makes you physically ill. That cannot be an easy task and I applaud your tenacity.

Determined and tenacious people with motion sickness, YOU are helping solve the motion sickness problem

 

 

So in conclusion, thank you all for making VR a thing. Thanks for toughing it out, thanks for sticking with it. If it weren’t for all of you, VR would have no future no matter how awesome it is. Everything starts from somewhere, a single step. You can’t instantly have hundreds of top quality AAA games in VR right at launch and expect it to work perfectly for everyone.

Perhaps that’s the thing people forget: You had to have Atari before you could have Nintendo and you had to have the NES before you could have a SNES and eventually a PS1. Videogames have been evolving for decades. You can’t just magically skip to PS4 right at the start.

Same thing with VR. Except since VR is an accessory to gaming and the base technology has evolved so much, we’re making much faster progress. In one year we’ve cleared the Atari 2600 age of VR (simple mini-games) and are rapidly dashing towards mid to late NES era of VR (more complex and fleshed out games). Keep it up, I’m predicting some real classics on the horizon next year (I hear Sairento is good and can’t wait to play it in PSVR)!

So Thank You, VR community.

Sonic Forces: Well *I* Liked It

I’m doin’ a real good job keeping this blog updated, huh? Anyway I just spent the past two weeks enjoying the controversial Sonic Forces. Is it as good as Colors and Generations? No. Is it BAD? No. Is it FLAWED? Yes. Is it some of the most fun I’ve had all year? Yes.

So I spent an hour and a half reconciling why I liked it so much.

If you don’t believe me, I streamed my whole first playthrough as well (volume warning: I had the Gain up to high)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Sonic Forces Demo is Good!

Okay, two things: First of all, yeah “a post a day” is a kind of bad idea as it can often result in hasty, poorly thought out posts so I’m not gonna force myself to do that because we’ll just wind up with crap but I’ll be sure to remember to update as often as possible.

 

But secondly: The Sonic Forces demo is good and people need to quit with the click baiting!

If you’re unfamiliar, recently a demo for the upcoming Sonic Forces popped up on the Japanese Nintendo Switch eShop. The catch is that you can only play for one minute before the game cuts you off so you can’t even beat a stage. You just barely get started and it stops.

This has lead to a number of articles and videos talking about how “The Sonic Forces demo is bad!” which has lead to people leaping to conclusions and going “Oh no! Another bad Sonic game!” which in turn has lead to Sonic fans flipping out and…it’s just a mess.

I may have written an article called “Sonic and the Worst Fandom Ever” (which has been dethroned by the way. Steven Universe fans are waaaaaaay worse! Makes Sonic Fans seem downright awesome by comparison) but I feel for ’em. That article was written from a place of love for Sonic Fans as so many of my friends ARE Sonic Fans and I enjoy the series myself.

Right now Sonic Fans are on edge. Colors and Generations were good but it has been a while since they came out. Meanwhile Sonic Mania is perhaps TOO good! So good that many people have taken back their former praise of Colors and Generations. This is unfortunate because while Mania is good, it lacks the things that make modern Sonic fun. Some folks love the cheesy vocal music, piles of fun characters, and almost hilariously overly serious plots with gigantic flashy melodramatic set pieces. I mean, I know I do! Yeah I’m in the camp that has weird feelings towards Sonic Mania: It is an objectively phenomenal game that’s fun to play but…I’d rather play Sonic Advance 1 myself (which I did and it’s SO AWESOME even if it does have some rough spots) or Colors or Generations.

Anyway, as for that Sonic Forces demo? It drastically exceeded my expectations! I’ve heard a bunch of people say “They should have just ported Sonic Generations to modern systems” but no, I think Sonic Forces feels a bit better. There have been complaints about the overly linear level design but…umm…we’ve seen one minute of the levels and even if they are linear they’re still pretty fun.

My only concern is that you don’t drop your rings in this game?! That’s…a shocking design choice. I admit, I can’t beat the Classic Sonic boss like this. Gonna be interesting to see how this plays out.

The GOOD news though is that the Switch version runs surprisingly smooth and looks okay now! Early videos showed the Switch version running pretty bad so I’m glad to see it has improved. This demo HAS served a purpose: I was trying to decide between the PS4 version (better graphics) or the Switch version (take it with me). I’m going with Switch. Portability is awesome and I wanna grind Original Character Do Not Steal parts on the go.

Agents of Mayhem: Why I Didn’t Buy It

So, Volition released a game called Agents of Mayhem a few months back and well…it was a complete flop. Now they’re trying to figure out what happened. Which, for the record, isn’t unusual. After a game releases, all companies do a “post-mortem” where they look at what people like and what people didn’t like so that way they can take it into account for next games and make them even better. Still, when a game flops like Agents of Mayhem did, further investigation is necessary.

Well lemme throw in my two cents. I’ve enjoyed Volition’s work in the past and considered grabbing Agents of Mayhem but ultimately decided against it. I was gonna rent it (because there are still video rental stores in my area) but ultimately didn’t even feel it was worth the $7 to try it for 5 nights.

So what went wrong?

Well for starters the initial trailer was awful. I remember it being shown at E3 with absolutely no gameplay or clue as to what the game even WAS. When we saw named, designed characters and considering what everyone else was showing off, many of us assumed it was an Overwatch-style Hero Shooter or a MOBA and were immidiately turned off.

Why? Well because in a multiplayer game like that, there’s only room for one or two kings of the genre. The handful that EVERYONE plays and the rest fall into disarray. Multiplayer games rely on having a large player base and without them, there’s no point in playing.

Overwatch knocked it out of the park SO HARD with its INCREDIBLE character designs that NOTHING could touch it! Those were some of the best character designs I had seen in more than a decade! When you’re selling your game based on the CHARACTERS, the designs matter a LOT.

Then, well, no one heard much of it. It left a “meh” first impression and nearly everyone wrote it off.

So imagine all our surprise when we found out that it was a single player game and didn’t even have the co-op of Saints Row! What?!

And yet, the taint of it being a “Hero Shooter” stuck with it in every review. Any hero shooter released now is expected to be a total flop and a joke desparately trying to chase the success of Overwatch.

But THEN we look at the gameplay and…this is just a neutered Saints Row! It’s Saints Row 4 but instead of custom characters with custom load outs, you have to pick between a bunch of bland and uninteresting characters with pre-set loadouts!

…and with pre-set characters that means no cruising around the city in a customized car going clothing shopping and making awesome outfits to wear. Yeah…Saints Row 2 might have been the best Barbie game ever made. I might have spent more than 30 hours just doing that.

But this was the problem: The game looked BLAND! None of the characters stood out or were particularly crazy! I mean there’s some good art for the game, but for the most part everyone just looked like a custom character I could make in Saints Row 4. If you’re gonna restrict the player to premade characters then you need to go all in! Where the heck was our gatling gun wielding dragon man who can fly? Where’s our super small foul mouthed pixie girl in a thong? Where’s the fucking robot? The aliens? A sentient chainsaw named Rupert?

Better question: Where’s the blonde?

I know that’s a weird one but the characters in the game all seemed really bland for some reason…then I saw a screenshot of Joule in one of the alternate outfits and I was like “WOAH! That actually looks cool! …looks like a knock-off of Suicide Squad Harley Quinn but I like the look! Who is that? Oh. Oh it’s Joule but in an alt outfit! Shoot if that was her normal I might have grabbed the game!”. Shoot I have strongly considered picking up the game BECAUSE of that outfit…but come to find out it’s a Digital Edition only outfit? Sorry I only buy physical.

EDIT: I’m not saying you NEED a blonde, I’m saying every single character in the game has dark black or brown hair. No gingers either and no crazy hair dye or anything!

By the way, pro tip: Uniforms are a bad idea.

I know they don’t ACTUALLY wear uniforms but the way all the promo art looks makes it seem like everyone is wearing purple with black hair. Again, it made them look bland and uninteresting and just not varied at all.

EDIT: Here, I made an image that illustrates the problem perfectly:

So to summarize, the reason I didn’t buy Agents of Mayhem was because it has all the worst elements of Hero Shooters (being too restrictive in what you can do) minus all the GOOD elements (awesome characters, multiplayer). Beyond that it just looked like Saints Row 4 but with less of everything. A Contraction Pack. The only positive I can think of about it is that it has a single player campaign.

The decision to utterly ditch multiplayer in order to have a character switching mechanic was the single dumbest decision in the entire game. “No multiplayer” was THE big complaint about the game and made everyone raise an eyebrow.

But I don’t think Volition understands JUST how important character creation IS.

See, my number one beef with the open world genre has always been the lack of custom characters. Ever since I first heard about Grand Theft Auto 2 I was annoyed that I couldn’t MAKE a character. I assumed it would be a feature down the line but it never was. I mean the whole selling point and angle of the genre is “Go anywhere, do anything! Freedom!” and yet I’m stuck playing this lame guy? I wanna be a hot chick! When can I do that?

GTA never delivered on this. The entire rest of the genre never delivered on this. Anyone who tells you that female characters in games are rare is an idiot who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, but on a genre-by-genre basis it is the free roaming open world games that are most lacking in female protagonists.

When I grabbed the demo of Saints Row 1, I grabbed it as a JOKE. I thought it would be the next 187: Ride or Die but when I popped it in and got to make a custom character? When I maxed out all the sliders and accidentally created a musclebound Richard Nixon (“I am not a crook…I’M STRAIGHT UP GANGSTA!”) I said “If the next game lets me make a female character, I’ll buy it”. Then the next game did. Bought it day 1. It is the greatest game in the entire genre (yes, better than 3 and 4).

More than that though, the character creation in Saints Row is LEGENDARY! It is one of the most talked about features. When people ask “What’s a game with good character creation?” Saints Row is ALWAYS brought up!

I understand the desire for pre-made characters. They’re marketable, you can put ’em on T-Shirts and make Funko Pops of them. They become iconic and beloved and can be tacked on to other products to help sell them. But your characters need to connect with people first.

Johnny Gat is not beloved because of his character design. His character design sucks. He’s beloved because of all the shit he did in Saints Row 2, because he was a fun likeable character. He was indeed well written and interesting. But we only knew that because we got to make our own far more compelling character and tag along with Johnny Gat.

Going forward, Volition, my advice would be: Make your next game built around custom characters. I admit, I have a huge bias here because I freaking love custom characters. But the character creation in Saints Row is legendary. You make a game with character creation and people will say “A game with character creation from the makers of Saints Row?! This is gonna be AWESOME!”. Believe it or not, more people know Saints Row for great character creation than they do for Johnny Gat.

Better still? That completely frees you from the Saints Row brand. You can have a COMPLETELY different art style, setting, and everything as long as the character creation is good because people do associate Saints Row with great character creation.

Anyway, that’s just my opinion. Take it or leave it. But I will say I just bought WWE2k18 and I don’t know shit about wrestling. I wonder why I bought it then…

OF COURSE GEL loves VR! *eyeroll*

If I told you I love VR, would you really be surprised? I have a soft spot for crazy new tech when it works.

Alas, far too many people think in binary extremes. Something is either good or it’s bad, it’s great or it’s shit. Whenever new tech comes along the question then becomes: Is it a revolutionary device that will CHANGE GAMING FOREVER or is it a useless overpriced gimmick? Those are the battle lines that are drawn. We have a tiny handful of VR True Believers insisting VR is the future and a LARGE number of folks shouting about how VR is a stupid gimmick everyone should shut up about.

The thing is, NOTHING will “change gaming forever”. You know why? Because gaming is already fun and being fun is the point of gaming (generally speaking anyway). As I’ve said in the past: Pac-Man and Tetris will never go out of style and no piece of new technology will make them “better”. Different perhaps, but not better. Standard controller and buttons gaming will never go out of style. Even when we have holodecks, you know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna use them to generate an old CRT and an NES.

…and then we’ll complain about the emulation inaccuracies. On the holodeck.

 

…

 

…you know I’m right.

To make matters worse, Nintendo successfully ruined the term “immersive” by using it as a flimsy excuse for building an entire console around a controller they accidentally put together BACKWARDS and didn’t wanna admit they fucked up. So people just say “Well you don’t need VR to be immersed in a game so clearly VR is a stupid overpriced gimmick!”

Know what else you don’t need to be immersed in a game? A big screen TV. Yet getting a big screen TV for gaming is something a lot of people would like. THAT is what VR is: an infinite inch big screen TV. Infinite because you get the game ALL AROUND YOU and in 3D to boot!

Suddenly VR makes a little more sense, right?

Indeed I wish I could play every game in VR even if they don’t benefit from it. I’ve already gotten a taste of that with Infinite Minigolf, a game available on pretty much everything but the PS4 one tacked on some PSVR support because they could. It doesn’t change the gameplay AT ALL. It’s not first person, you don’t use the Move, it is the EXACT SAME GAME just you’re surrounded by the game world…AND I LOVE IT!

This is why I think VR will take off…NEXT console generation. Because then you could just build in VR support for all 3D games on a system level and yes this is possible. Believe it or not, there’s a VR version of the Dolphin Gamecube/Wii emulator floating around out there which lets you play any Gamecube/Wii game in VR. Wish I had the tech to try it for myself but it looks super promising and if we can just make any Gamecube or Wii game VR, then we could totally build a system around universal VR support!

Now obviously you DO NOT REQUIRE VR. Not everyone likes it, not everyone can afford it (though I expect it to be MUCH cheaper by next generation), do NOT make this an XBox One Kinect situation it WILL tank your system. Oh sure, sell a bundle pack that comes with it just don’t require it.

But what is it I like so much about VR?

Well to be honest, the surrealness. See, the videos of VR do not do it justice as all you see is a blurry low-res shaky image. But inside VR you actually see the entire game world all around you in 3D and yes I think 3D is a bit of a gimmick normally. However, in VR where you can look at objects from multiple angles, the 3D is much more interesting. The head tracking is super tight and the result is that you are replacing your 3D view of the real world with a 3D view of a GAME world. Couple that with some solid 3D surround sound via headphones and some games can give you a trippy sense on “being there”.

The strange lonliness I felt when doing the practice courses in SPARC was unbelieveable. I really felt like I was alone inside a metal box floating in space just bouncing a ball around. It gave me chills. Not every VR game pulls this off but when they do it is a trip.

Then there’s the sense of scale. When I rise up out of the elevators in RIGS and look around the massive battle stadium, I really get a sense for the SIZE of it all! Does that added sense of size change gaming forever? No, but it does make for a very compelling experience I can’t get on a flat TV.

Of course, my favorite is when I get a VR body. When I played the EVE: Valkyrie demo for the first time, I remember marvelling at how the body moves along with me as I swayed when I noticed my chest looked a bit odd. I tried to crane my head around to see if it was what I thought it was only to see my crotch and wide child bearing hips in the skintight flight suit my avatar was wearing. Well. Question answered then. (For the record the full game lets you choose a male avatar, but the demo is female only)

That got more surreal with Ancient Amuletors, a tower defense wave shooter out of China where you play as a variety of different heavily designed characters, each with their own unique method of attacking. One fires a bow, another generates and throws magic orbs, yet another wields dual shotgun pistols and so on. What’s fascinating is that this game is played standing up with full 1:1 motion tracking and the characters are designed in such a way that EVEN THEIR HANDS have character and personality to them.

…and the archer is a busty elf babe with awesome leather gauntlets and pink painted fingernails. Yeah. It was weird…but in a fun way! Honestly makes me wonder when someone will take this idea further, have a game all about posessing random bodies or shape shifting and people reacting to you differently depending on who you are. It would also be cool to watch your own arms hulk out or turn into werewolf claws or something.

Again, that’s not a game changer. But it’s also not something you can get on a normal TV. Remember we’re talking 1:1 motion tracking so where your arm is in real space? It correlates near perfectly to where the elven archer’s dainty hands are in virtual space.

Which DOES bring up the one thing VR actually DOES improve: Motion Controls.

Yup. VR by its very nature is a form of motion control. Think about it: what defines VR? The visor/goggles/HMD which tracks your head movement in 3D space and that in turn controls the in-game camera. Your head MOTION CONTROLS the camera. Motion control.

Of course if you’re already tracking a head in space, why not track some controllers too? The result is REAL 1:1 motion control where the PSMove is the MINIMUM quality of control that would work. No Wiimote waggling and laggy Kinect gestures allowed. Cripes that would be awful in VR.

I’ve already spoken at length about how motion control actually IS potentially revolutionary, not because it improves existing games but because it can create new genres and possibilities!

But how does VR improve it? Spacial awareness. When using 1:1 motion control on the PS3 with the Move, it was like puppeteering the on screen character. You had to think “This glowstick in my hand represents the sword on screen. How I move my glowstick is how the sword will move.” Though the Move was quite accurate, you could still have a little trouble aiming your motions.

In VR, however, you’re not looking at a screen. You look to your left or right and where your hand is in real space? That’s where your virtual hands are in virtual space. It’s not “this glowstick represents an on-screen sword”, it’s “in the virtual world, I have a sword in my hand”. This makes swinging much more natural and accurate as I experienced with Fruit Ninja VR. I should make a side-by-side comparison video as one of the Move fitness games had a frisbee slicing mode that was very similar and I could easily notice the difference in my accuracy between the two.

Alas, the concept of motion control has been kinda ruined to most people. Shoot, if the reception to Starfox Zero is any indication then most folks may actually have some kind of weird motion control PTSD!

…and yet they still won’t admit that the Wiimote is a busted piece of poorly designed crap that didn’t work because Nintendo put it together backwards.

Whatever. I could probably compile these feelings into a more eloquent and concise article later on, but I think you get the point: I love VR, but I think it needs a few more years to become mainstream as people work out the remaining kinks: price, figuring out how to actually MAKE VR games, and solving the motion sickness problem (which is more complex than most people realize…might need to explain that later but the long and short of it is: everyone’s motion sickness is different and there is no one singular solution to it and in some cases a solution for one person will make another person sick). I think VR isn’t so revolutionary it will change gaming forever, but I do think it is incredibly compelling and does offer some interesting and surreal experiences you can’t get normally. And, you know, I love the PS Move so much I pretty much bought a VR headset just for it (though even I admit the button layout is awful).

BUT! I DO understand why a lot of people hate VR or are very negative towards it and perhaps we’ll explore that later. Either way I have one last thing I wanna say:

The Nintendo Switch is my dream console. I’ve wanted a portable/console hybrid since I was like 5 or 6 years old. On top of that, it has so many of my favorite games it is absurd: the first official US release of Waku Waku 7, an unbutchered real Puyo Puyo game complete with Draco Centarus, a new Blaster Master game which lets you play as Shantae as well as a Shantae game I might have Kickstarted for $200, a game about playing dress-up with cute tentacled girls, a weird simplified boxing game featuring a hot black chick who fights with giant pigtails, and even a new Penguin-kun Wars! At this point all it needs is an amazing rail shooter and we’re in business!

…and yet, I have used my PSVR far more. I have found myself prioritizing getting more PSVR games over other kinds of games and I have used it regularly since the day I got it. I do not recommend it wholeheartedly due to the large pricetag and unusual game library that mostly consists of weird $20 indie experiments. However, I can safely say that there is SOMETHING there.

…and yeah lets make a GEL Rambles About VR Again tag. We’re gonna need it.

Wise Fwom Yo’ Gwave?!

Cripes. “Hey everyone, its been a while!” may as well be my catchphrase at this point! Its seriously been almost TWO YEARS since my last blog post?! Egad this turned from The Hub For All Things GEL to a barren unused wasteland!

So what brought me back? Well I was just reading an article on mattress review blogs and people making money by writing about mattresses and I said “HA! I wish I could do that with a videogame blog!” and then I remembered the good old days on LiveJournal.

SOMEHOW, my LiveJournal got a weirdly decent number of hits. New people always popped up out of nowhere to comment and to this day I still stumble into my LiveJournal sometimes in Google Image Searches. This was because I had a “Post to LiveJournal” link on my link bar at all times and anytime the fancy struck me I’d just tap that and make the magic happen. I’d post about all sorts of random crap from the newest game I got to random waifu finds. It was dumb, but hey so is the internet sometimes.

 

But THEN I wanted to be all “professional” and moved to WordPress and categorized things. My desire to be professional caused me to lock up and not post anymore. I overthought things and it was a mess.

Then things just started getting political and divisive and I had a hard time writing ANYTHING without controversial politics creeping just around the corner. It’s actually quite irritating because of course I have “political” opinions of my own I’d like to post about but at the same time I totally understand everyone being sick and tired of seeing videogames getting politicized. Be the change you wanna see and all.

But anyway, I realized that there are so many things I can write about that I don’t entirely know where to throw it and you know what? You never know when a random internet searcher will stumble upon your stupid blog because they share the same interests as you and your dumb posts are exactly what they needed.

ON that note: Yes, The Rail Shooter Archive is still in the back of my mind. I am literally sitting next to a pile of rail shooters. I just haven’t been in a rail shooty mood so my passion to write about them isn’t there at the moment. My gaming moods come in “seasons” and once Rail Shooter Season strikes once again, I’ll go in whole hog…or I might do a video just to do a video. Either way the site serves its primary purpose: To provide a large list of all the chase-view rail shooters I could find for any fellow rail shooter enthusiasts desperately searching for such a thing as I once did.

ANYWAY! I’m thinking it’s time to do my New Years Resolution early. I just bookmarked my post button and made a section for random bloggy rambling. I’m gonna try and post something, ANYTHING, no matter how minor and stupid at least once a day and see what happens. See how long I can keep it up.

Place your bets for how many weeks until I give up.

BUT! There’s MORE! See, I actually have a radio show now. As I was working towards a degree, in one of my classes we did radio interviews for our final and in two different classes that did this, everyone said I had a great voice for radio and should look into it. Well I did and am doing GameBabble Live at the local college radio station.

That means I can advertise this goofy blog there on the show! So…you know…that might be an idea.

If you’re wondering, the station is 89.5FM KCFV The Wave and thanks to the magic of the internet you can listen to it on a number of different sites. Like right here:

http://www.stlcc.edu/FV/KCFV/Index.html

Show airs Wednesdays from 1-3PM Central Time

 

Anyway, here’s hoping I actually get back to blogging and sharing my bizzarre opinions with the internet. While we’re here though, what are your thoughts on more “political” posts? Should I avoid them entirely, put a warning before them, or make a separate blog for them? I have a feeling “just don’t” is probably the best option, but lemme know in the off chance any of the 5 regulars swing by here again.

GameMetabble – Zestiria, Rodea, Street Fighter V, and…WWE2K16?!

Now that we’re all caught up, here’s the latest Metabble where I discuss the Wii/Wii U differences in Rodea: The Sky Soldier, talk a little about Zestiria, a good chunk about my SFV experience (and WARNING: I get slightly political as I discuss the recent censoring), and then we talk about the first WWE game I’ve ever bought new!

As you might have guessed, I ruined it as hard as I could XD

BONUS: When I say “WWE2K16 is buggy” I mean…

GameMetabble – The Empty Christmas List?

Wow! Sorry to wait so long posting THIS! Know how this Holiday Season seems a little dry? Well I still found something to get excited over! Woo!

Stream-O-Rama

Hey! SO! Been awhile since I posted last. I’ve made quite a few Stream videos, exploring the maddening world of Mario Maker as well as getting oddly into ModNation Racers. Played some Transformers (which is awesome) and even Rodea: The Sky Soldier just the other day.

So, rather than letting WordPress auto-post the videos, I’ll see if I can force it to do links because we have a LOT of catching up to do. Here we go!

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9/16/2015 – The Madness of Pumpkin Spice Latte

Me and Mr.Whitefolks play some Mario Maker…and I forget to turn my mic on for the first hour and a half! Don’t worry, I edited it down. Afterwards I go crazy as Rockin’ joins us and I build my best stage yet.

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9/20/2015 – Skylanders: WITNESS ME!!!

I give Skylanders: Superchargers a shot. This is just me so it’s a little bland.

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9/23/2015 – What’s Wrong with Mario’s FAAAAAAAAAACE!

The fine folks at Red Letter Media made a stage and me & Whitefolks take a look at it…it was very uneventful…until someone decided to start playing my stream in a nerd bar in front of 90 people?! Then I play Skylanders some more, this time wit Whitefolks in tow.

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9/30/2015 – Zapping to the EXTREME!

Christia-erm…CHRISTINE Weston Chandler made some Mario Maker stages?! Me and Mr.Whitefolks: World’s Biggest Sonichu Fan take a look!

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10/4/2015 – Being a Weird Fanboy in ModNation Racers/CTR

With no one to join me and my mind blown that 5 years later people are still playing ModNation Racers, I reveal my weird fanboy side as I delve into the strange world of DeviantKart. Also I try Crash Team Racing for real.

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10/4/2015 – ModNation: 5 Years Later

Later that same day I dive further in ModNation Racers with a lot more actual RACING!

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10/7/2015 – Sonichu Kart

Oh of course no one will join me for ModNation Racers, but exploring the creations of CWC? Count Mr.Whitefolks in! …and drag along Rockin’ too.

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10/10/2015 – Decepticon May Cry

Watch as UnderThePale’s cynicism melts into joy as I play Transformers: Devastation. Game of the Year material here.

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10/17/2015 – Transformathon

A stream of a stream as Mothis the Hardcore Transformers Fan dives into Prime difficulty with me and UnderThePale in tow. One of the better episodes if you like hardcore nerdery.

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11/11/2015 – Rodea with Viper!

Viper from ye olde Pixelphilia Podcast joins me from Australia as I show off the SEGA-tacular Rodea: The Sky Soldier on Wii…and the shitshow that is Rodea on Wii U. Also: Fishing Resort! (It’s related, trust me.)

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WELL! Now that we’re caught up on THAT! Let’s go post that Metabble I forgot to post!