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Games I've come to enjoy and why Capcom is horrible

It's been a while since I posted on this blog. I've been having exams, and just had nothing interesting to talk about. So, just to keep this blog alive, in my own mind if nowhere else, I'm gonna talk about these two things. Maybe in the future, I'll separate them into two different topics and make separate posts about them, but till then, here goes.

Okay, so I've been late to a couple of bandwagons. Both of these games have been out for quite some time.

The first one is Batman : Arkham Asylum. I know what you're thinking - "Have you been living under a rock? I hate you and I hope your family die of asteroids." Whoa. Harsh. If asteroids fall in to the earth's atmosphere they're called meteorites apparently. But also, I had tried this game out before and enjoyed it, but since I had an error that didn't allow GFWL on my PC, I couldn't save, so had to play the same parts over and over again. But now, I've been playing the game and saving and playing some more, and it's awesome fun. My favorite parts are the nocturnal hunter stages, where you have to take out a room full of baddies while sneaking around and swinging from gargoyles with the Joker providing commentary. For how good I am at the game (which is not good at all), these levels can be quite challenging as the baddies almost always have firearms and if a couple of them spot you, they can easily kill you before you've evaded them. It also however allows for pure awesomeness as you can hang down from a gargoyle (like your namesake) and swoop down and choke a bad guy out then hang him from said gargoyle. The exploration is also quite fun because of the beautiful levels with so many alternate routes and hidden puzzles. My least favorite part of the game are the sections where you have to take out a room full of bad guys by repeatedly hitting the,. Very few of these are actually challenging (The boss fight with Bane was the toughest I've found yet), but they just go on for ages. Punch, dodge, counter, stun, and rinse and repeat. Not that that's not fun in small doses, but I wish the game gave me a choice to just "Nocturnal Predator" their asses, instead of punching around like Dishonored did. In that game, you could go in guns blazing and try to kill everyone (you would get killed easily unless you'd powered up a lot though), or sneak around and incapacitate them or just avoid them all together. I really would've liked these choices in this game. But all in all, awesome game, and I hope I get to check out Arkham City too.

The second one is Far Cry 3. Now, +Ayush Jha had made me play this in the past, but I just played the opening sequence and wasn't too into it. Now a year later, I'm a few hours into the game, however, and  I'm loving it. It's very unique from other FPS games in that you really have to think things out instead of rushing in and firing everywhere again very a la Dishonored, but with a beautiful open world island as opposed to beautiful but closed up gothic-punky levels. The island is very much alive, and beasts attack the enemy as much as you. In fact, in one case, I arrived at an out post and was tagging the enemies to take out silently with my sniper rifle, only to discover they were all getting brutalized by a wild tiger. It wasn't a caged tiger I had set free, it was just a wild tiger who happened to stumble into frightened pirates and attacked them. I didn't have to fire a single bullet to capture that outpost. I just had to sit back and let the tiger finish his job. The rest of it was quite challenging even in normal difficulty and also enormously fun.

Now Capcom is a company whose games I really enjoyed in the past, chief among them being the Devil May Cry series and the Phoenix Wright series. These series have fans all over the world. These fans own both iPhones and Android phones. Capcom released both Devil May Cry refrain and Phoenix Wright HD trilogy on both Android and iPhones in Japan. They also released both of these in English speaking countries on iOS. Why then, is Capcom refusing to release the Android versions also in English? They've already released Android versions and translated the iOS version. It isn't that difficult to simply replace the text, which they've already done in the iOS. They could just copy and paste the text into the Android version and voila, it would be translated. But they refuse to do it. Not only have they not released the Android versions, they refuse to acknowledge this in their forums and the many, many questions that have been asked about this have been completely ignored. The only reason I can think of for this is that they've signed into a deal with Apple which forbids them from releasing english games into the google play store. They've also removed a couple of english games that used to be available, like Resident evil 4 mobile from the play store. And you know what, I hope this is the case, because the alternative is that they either hate their fans or are unaware of the fact that Android has long since taken over from iOS worldwide. Samsung alone sells more smartphones than Apple, for example.

Alright, so that was a rant about Capcom and a couple of old games that I'm playing.

Why Gameloft is the literal devil incarnate: Blitz Brigade Game Review

If you haven't heard of Gameloft, you either don't own a smartphone or you don't use it for gaming much. Gameloft is THE biggest mobile game developer. There was a time when it was well liked within the mobile gaming community. Maybe its still well liked. What I meant was, there was a time when I respected Gameloft as a developer. In the past, Gameloft made games of incredibly high quality for the time. They were just clones of better PC games but they were as good as you got in the day. The Modern Combat series remain one of the best FPSs on the platform. But what they've been doing lately is making "Free 2 play" games that actually cost hundreds of dollars to play. Today I'm going to tell you why I have come to hate Gameloft and why you should too.

As an example lets take the game "Blitz Brigade". A copy of sorts of the PC game Team Fortress 2. The gameplay seems fun. The graphics seem to be of good quality. And all of this is free? Yes, with a catch of course. The crux of the game is the online multiplayer, where you basically pay to win. You need to pay money

To pay money

to pay money and buy shit.

You pay for more classes,

  you pay for better weapons,

you pay for giant vehicles,

 you pay for consumables and single use items

you basically everything and those who can't literally can't kill a thing.
For example, I literally shot directly at a guy's head for 20 seconds, while he was killing all my teammates, and did next to no damage. He then, of course, turns around and shoots me once, and I'm dead. 3 people shooting at this guy and his you couldn't tell unless you looked very closely that his health had gone down at all, while 3 people who couldn't afford to pay for giant guns lie dead around him.
Well, that's just one guy right? There must be games where the other players are also not able to pay for wins. Or you probably have a lot of cash you can possibly spend on this game? Yeah, there might be - if the server let you stay on for more than 2 minutes. I've seen the reviews of this game and I'm definitely not the only one with this problem. 

The game takes forever to "log in" 

Check my internet strength. No connectivity my ass.

and then when you finally find a server 

 

and join a match (both of which also take a million years),

and you finally start playing, you face SO MANY connectivity issues, I can't even...

I can't count the times I was shooting at the enemy, got a "no connectivity" and then came back to my body lying dead on the ground and my enemy celebrating.

Still no connectivity

 And if you can stand all that, within a few minutes, you get booted out of the server for "bad connection" despite getting 3 bars on my wifi (check my "logging in" screenshot). This has happened to me literally EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

And then, it keeps me offline.

I took these screenshots from literally 2 games, and both times I was booted offline. I've tried heaps before too and literally every time, I'm booted off the server.

Well, that's not too bad. You can still play single player "training missions" right? First of all, you still have to "log in" to play these missions. Secondly, there is no way you get to the second level, let alone the other levels, without paying money. Think I'm exaggerating? To unlock levels, you need to get heaps of stars by completing missions. The one of the missions of the first stage, I killed every single enemy, got multiple multiplier chains, hunted down all secret items and let no one escape. My score? 4975. The score you have to have to get 3 stars? 27500. The minimum to get one tiny little single star? 10000.

10000 maybe would be possible if you can get every enemy one after another with superhuman reflexes and keep the multiplier going for the entire thing. Even then, you can't get to 27000. Oh, but conveniently, you can pay to get to the next level.

What's that? You'll level up in the single player by playing the same missions over and Over again and then play multiplayer to catch up to the rich noobs without paying? Oh...you only get exp the first time you play a mission. So, you can't even do that.

Every little thing about this game is designed to make you cough up cash. It's as bad as I've ever seen it. If you can't pay (and I can't because I live in Nepal and $1~Rs100 imagine paying a $100 for a single virtual weapon) then you might as well not play this game. If you can pay, then pray that the server doesn't randomly boot you out for an imaginary "bad connection".

Gameloft, please, if you want, charge us decent money for the game but please drop this leeching "IAP" system you've got going, that you're using to suck money out of us like a whore sucks mayonnaise out of hotdogs. As it is, this game just sucks shit.

Please check out my youtube channel

I've started a animation channel. It's actually got better animations much better than some of the others on youtube with much higher subscribers. I'm not talking to the level of HISHE or Egoraptor. Obviously those channels have much better animations than mine. But some of the others don't and they have lots of subscribers, which means people probably enjoy them. If you enjoy those ones, you'll probably enjoy mine more. Check it out, please: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaQML2EJOQnEgO1h1nchodg

The Amazing Spiderman 2 in a minute (Funny Youtube Video)

Amazing Spiderman 2 Parody

Movies Literally!! A Funny Youtube Video

Funny Youtube Video! Check it out !

Katekyoshi Hitman Reborn (Home Tutor Hitman Reborn) Manga Review (NOT ANIME! >.<) [No spoilers]

Katekyoshi Hitman Reborn

 

Tsuna and his six Guardians of the Sky

Not many stories have a setting as ridiculous as Hitman Reborn and still succeed as a story. I mean come on, a Japanese weakling who's constantly failing at life is suddenly the next Don of the biggest Italian mafia. It almost seems like a fantasy of just such a weakling, but Amano Akira's manga became one of the most popular manga of all time. For people who've just started reading the manga or watching the anime, you might think this is because the general population is stupid. 

Well, the general population IS stupid, but that's not the reason this manga is so popular. Make it past the first few chapters and what it becomes is a genuinely dark and fascinating story, with ridiculousness and slapstick peppered in. If you can't stand the stupidity, then I implore you to look past it, for what remains is a brilliant, brilliant story. 

Originally being a manga targeted towards kids, it changed it's tone dramatically, so much so that the anime stopped being broadcast because the next art was too dark and violent. (That may not be the only reason but I assume it's a large part of it.) 

On a side-note, those people who've only watched the anime, you MUST read the manga. The anime does not in any way live up to the manga. Amano's art is absolutely beautiful in many instances and it helps the story when it becomes dark or poignant. 

 

 

Art

Now, for all its boons, it has a massive flaw - The Final Arc. "The battle of the rainbow" arc begins quite strongly.  It answers a lot of questions fans were curious about. But then it just falls into a spiral that becomes stupid, confusing and pointless. It obviously even confused the writer, as it ends so abruptly, it's like hitting a brick wall you didn't know was there. There is no resolution to the story what so ever.

So, if you're prepared to take that on board, then I promise the rest of the ride won't leave you disappointed.
For what it is, it is a brilliant piece of work. It doesn't try to humanize the mafia or try to justify its actions. It is cheesy and melodramatic at times as most manga are (unlike a lot of manga, it succeeds in not sexualizing its female characters for the most part) , but I promise you, give it a chance and it won't disappoint.

(All images taken from [Katekyoshi Hitman Reborn Colore Official Artbook]
I claim no ownership of any of the images. It all belongs to Amano Akira.)

 

Twitter feed

Hey, so i just linked this blog and its twitter (@Stuff_Iwriteabt), so I'm,  just checking to see if it works. Feel free to follow on twitter. I don't really use it, but from now hopefully all blog posts will be posted there so you can get easy updates. Okay, here goes.

How Do I Promote My Youtube Videos If Google Keeps Banning Me!!! Google's evil Ghostbanning Policy!

So, I recently started a YouTube channel to publish my short funny animations. As of now, one of them is uploaded, and I'm working on a second, based on Amazing Spiderman 2. So, it turns out, making the video was the easy part. I waited and waited, but my video literally got no views. Like, zero. I waited and waited. Eventually I got desperate, as people do, and against my better judgement, I posted a couple of "hey, check out my channel" comments on a couple YouTube videos. And when I say a couple, I mean a couple. It was on 3 or 4 "If movies were real" videos from Smosh, as my animation was based on a similar premise (check the end). I wasn't bombarding heaps of videos, whoring myself out. I just needed a few people to check my videos out. They were short and moderately funny, if I do say so myself. Pretty soon I realized, while my comments looked as if they were published from my account, when I logged out and checked the videos, my comments weren't showing up. I googled this and found out that Google had "Ghost banned" me. Basically my comments looked like they were being published but no one else could see them.

Now I know what you're thinking- "Advertising your channel can be as cheap as a few dollars. Just do that you cheapskate." But I'm from Nepal, and $1 is equal to 100 Rs. in the local currency. Would you spend a 100 or 300 of your local currency to pay for ads that would only ever get you very few views and even fewer viewers?" The only way I could pay for it anyway is if I could earn money from my videos through adsense.

Talking about adsense, the minimum payout rate of adsense is $100. While this may seem sensible in the U.S. or the U.K. or richer countries, I would much rather get my payouts quicker, especially cuz I can't get any views. Imagine if you had to wait until your account had 10000 in order to get your money when you're getting no views (literally none) whatsoever. That's what I have to do.

Google has basically stopped me from promoting my videos. New channels on YouTube have to be either lucky or rich, rather than creative, because there is no way to get your content out there, other than paying for advertising. There are no avenues left to me. I don't know why I'm writing this blog either, because there's no way people are going to find this and read this and sympathize. I hardly get a few views on this blog in a week.

If you'd like to help me out, check my animation out and if you like it, tell your friends.. It's only 49 seconds long, so it won't take much of your time. You an find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snqkBa7tSzY . It's called Movies Literally, and it's basically about what movies would be like if the title defined the plot. It literally has 0 views at the moment, so, you'd help me out a lot.
 

Hunter X Hunter Manga series review

Hunter X Hunter is most well known in the anime/manga world for it hiatuses. From what I can tell from the fan's outrage, its had a few hiatuses which last years at a time. As I write this the manga is on hiatus. Apparently its coming back in June.

But this is my point - I don't really care if it comes back or not. Not because I don't like the series, but because as far as I'm concerned, the series has come to a perfect end. Hunter X Hunter's storyline goes from simple and humorous to completely convoluted and confusing to beautiful and poignant and back to humorous again.

 Where the story has ended right now is in the transition between poignant and humorous., and in my opinion, it's as good a place to end this story as any, because as I caught up with the whole series in two days, there were points so convoluted and complicated and boring that I was regretting starting to read this at all. But it all led to a satisfying, and in case of the last arc, beautiful endings. Now was the ending worth all the pointless headache? Well, that depends on the individual reader. But what I don't want is the story to start up again get confusing and boring and end suddenly like Katekyoshi Hitman Reborn did, because that is how we will remember the series now, as an inconclusive bore.