Star Ocean 6 – Thoughts

Well today was certainly a shocker for sure, I didn’t expect to see a Star Ocean game so soon, kinda a shame that I did my comparison so early, I could have included it in there, don’t think you’re going to escape from my scrutiny Star Ocean 6, I will certainly take great pleasure in tearing you apart like I did with all the other games in the series. Regardless, with the announcement of Star Ocean 6 came a very depressing revelation, the fact that we have had 2 Star Ocean games in a row with no Valkyrie Profile games in between, even if we count mobile games, this is still true since Star Ocean also has a mobile game. This immediately hit me when I saw this announcement and I thought “this isn’t what I truly wanted, but it’s better than nothing”.

It honestly shocks me that they have gone this route with the game because I expected them to do a remake of Star Ocean Till The End Of Time because it would be a sure sell. Instead what they seem to be doing is taking a more modern approach to the Star Ocean series. What this means is that the entire Star Ocean series is going to have a completely new identity. Now this can go one of two ways. We could either get lucky and get the Pokemon Colosseum of the Star Ocean series, or we could get unlucky and get the Diablo 3 of the Star Ocean series, where everything that made the series special to begin with disappears and gets replaced with trash modern gameplay.

Now I know that a lot of people hated Star Ocean 5 but honestly this could actually get worse but at the same time it could get better. If there’s one thing 5 did right it’s the fact that it stayed true to the formula for the most part. Now I highly doubt that Star Ocean 6 will be the worst Star Ocean since it’s pretty damn hard to top Star Ocean 3 and Anamnesis in that regard. What I will say though is that this could and probably will change the Star Ocean series forever, its identity will change for the better or for worse and we should brace ourselves for this transition. I both fear and anticipate Star Ocean 6, it is the unknown, it is all or nothing, this is the last hope for the Star Ocean series… because the previous last hope was ruined by an emo loli, a cat girl and a winged demonic creature that overdosed on helium and has a crayon stuck in their brain, so we need another hope to save the series.

Here’s the reality people, many of the people who worked at tri-Ace in the past have sadly departed, Suguro is gone now and so many other people have left the company. They have hired new talent and because of this, we have to expect something completely different. I have a feeling that when I do get to play Star Ocean 6, I will hopefully enjoy it but at the same time, I will be one of those guys who misses the good ol’ days of the early games. Still I am always up for change because at least there’s a chance that change can bring good. The only problem is that I am a member of the 2000’s renaissance, I yearn for the good old days and the industry as it is today has a lot of problems. I fear that Star Ocean 6’s new approach may be a colossal failure due to the state of the industry. At the same time I feel like I may be alienated by the game due to the fact that the entire industry has alienated me for over a decade, yet only 1 Star Ocean game has been released in the previous decade, the one beforehand getting 2 releases, so forgive me for sounding like a grumpy old sod but I feel like gaming has left me behind.

The thing is though, I do really want to play this game at some point but at the same time, I have so many games to play right now as it is that I can honestly wait till 2024 to play my new Star Ocean game, then again I don’t want them to delay it for so long that it becomes another Duke Nukem Forever or Final Fantasy XV, we certainly don’t want that do we? I certainly can wait for it though and I will, I can’t say that I can’t wait because I have plenty to do in the meantime, so many 6th gen gems for me to play for the time being. Just means my backlog is gonna get bigger and bigger till I get buried under it, someone help me, I’m dying from lack of oxygen due to all the unfinished games piled on top of me, blocking the air flow!

I think my perception of gaming has changed a lot in the past few years, it went from being excited to new releases to being “Oh ok, this is a thing, I’ll try to pretend to be excited” hopefully I won’t miss the party when I’m busy playing No More Heroes as well as countless other games, most of which are 6th gen gems because I don’t want to miss this game as it is a tri-Ace game and tri-Ace games, no matter how flawed they may be, always speak to me in ways that few other games can. Let’s just hope that this tri-Ace game will maintain their streak, I might have enjoyed Star Ocean 5 but that could very well change, I could actually end up losing interest in the series as a whole.

Now I don’t want to leave this on a negative note because even though I am Cynical Gaming Blog, I will definitely say that what I have seen based on the trailer has all been good so far, the thing is that trailers have a habit of showcasing only the best parts of the game. Will that huge city I get to fly across be like one of like 6 places I get to visit in the entire game? It could be. Also when the game comes out, the combat might actually suck because we have barely seen anything on it. For all we know, they could be bringing back the dreaded MP Death mechanic, god forbid that ever happens. Ok, sorry I’m being negative again, it’s become a habit of mine, blame the industry. I’ll give the trailer a 10/10 for trying, just try to exceed my expectations for once instead of building up false hope like the cruel cruel industry you are.

Trailer Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwlduVD_aqc

Rate The Create – Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires

Console Gaming should have died with the Gamecube *Rant*

I’m sick and tired of being demonized and being called a PC Elitist when consoles continue to prove themselves to be incompetent. It’s come to the point now that consoles are immune to criticism. I think some console gamers need to learn a few cold hard facts and I’m going to deliver those cold hard facts today because I am sick and tired of their ignorance, it really is ruining the gaming industry.

So what has caused me to make this post? Well it’s simple, my PS3 has been going wrong for a while now but now it has gotten worse, not only does my PS3 force shutdown at certain points when I play certain games but now the horrendous disk drive refuses to accept any disks I try to put into it and this has happened out of thin air.

The issue stems from modern technology, the need to have so-called “short term convenience tech gimmicks” to impress people at E3, the most bullshit event known to man. The issue is that these gimmicks are severely detrimental to the hardware in the long term and this is ultimately what makes PC gaming better than console gaming. Now you’ve all heard me being up the online paywalls and stuff like forced installation but honestly, there’s another problem with modern consoles and it’s a huge problem, that problem is future proofing.

Now it goes without saying that hardware doesn’t last forever which is the reason why emulation exists in the first place. Emulators exist for this very reason and honestly it is the last hope gaming has. That being said however, I do own several systems that date back to the 90’s and the 2000’s. My SNES is over 20 years old now, possibly 30 years old and somehow still works, my ps2 slim has been in my possession for at least over 10 years and still works too but my PS3 is nowhere near as old as my PS2 and is having major problems, heck even though my Xbox 360’s disk drive has proven to be problematic in later years, I did find a workaround, my advice is to always keep a disk in the tray, it makes it easier for it to eject the disk tray. The issue is however that the PS3’s disk drive is fully automatic and what scares me is that every single modern system nowadays (except the Switch) has an automatic disk drive, this includes the Wii, the PS4, Wii U, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. If you own any of these systems or a PS3 then brace yourselves, you’re going to have a lot of problems in the future and things are going to start getting very complicated for you fast.

The thing is that I know my PS3 is dying, I’ve seen the signs for quite some time now. The sudden forced shutdowns are clearly a sign that the parts inside are failing, something that is easily solvable on PC due to the fact that it is compatible with numerous parts. If a part on your PC stops working, it’s a simple replacement. On a console however it’s not so simple because everything inside that thing is built for that specific system. For this reason, when consoles go wrong, the so-called “accessibility” argument that many console fanboys like to brag about is immediately nullified because consoles are not simple, they never have been. PC’s aren’t simple either, however they are considerably easier to fix when they go wrong and that’s only the start of it.

Consoles are also terrible when it comes to backing up. How on earth are you supposed to get access to digital games when the playstation store disappears, what then? You spent money on these digital games after all and when your console dies you are fucked. If you buy a game off GOG and your system dies it really isn’t a big deal since you can backup your games with ease, it’s just a simple copy/paste job to a backup HDD/SDD. Consoles however are built to make this process almost impossible, likely to prevent piracy which is stupid because pirates will always find a way and PC offers them an easy means of getting access to games because PC is freedom, consoles are authoritarian, this is and will always be the issue with console gaming, the fact that they are designed to dictate what you can and can not do, PC’s are not, they are designed to be used in whatever ways one sees fit. So the only way to solve this is by installing custom firmware and homebrewing systems which depending on the system can be easy or hard. In the PS3’s case I looked up videos on this and it seemed to be more hassle than it was worth. Something that would take about 20 minutes to do on pc takes 2+ hours to do on console. It is easier to install RPCS3 and play ripped ISO’s on it than it is to homebrew a PS3, that is just facts.

Now nothing is impossible, there are ways to solve the issues with consoles but they very complicated when compared to the solutions on PC and this immediately thwarts the one and only thing consoles have over PC, “accessibility”. I get that PC gaming is tough to get into and that figuring out what games will work on your system can be a pain at first but over time, these things become less of an issue because you get used to them. People can argue that building/maintaining a PC can be complicated but if that’s how you feel, just buy a pre-built PC, it’s literally no different from buying a console, only you’re getting something that is arguably better. You can also get a friend or professionals to build/maintain it for you, at a cost. Thing is, the options are there and honestly if you think that maintenance issues apply only to PC then you are incredibly naive. Consoles may not be problematic at first since you have warranty but once that warranty becomes void and the systems become outdated, it’s all on you to maintain them and I can tell you for a fact that if you lack the ability to build a PC then you will never ever be able to maintain/fix a console, that’s for sure.

So now you are stuck, you have a library of games that you can’t even use, hours of time invested into them and you can’t even go back. Your data may be salvageable if you’re lucky but this isn’t always the case. As I have stated before, when attempting to backup my Xbox 360 data to a USB drive, I found out that certain files were stored on the EEPROM. For example, if you want to back up your Ninja Gaiden Black data then good luck because once your console’s hard drive dies, you will lose all of your progress since you cannot back up your data, you also cannot save it to a USB. You are fucked. I also noticed this with other games too so if this is the case then you should enjoy those save files while they last because someday they will be gone. Now sure, back in the day cartridges had save batteries but back then games were typically shorter, not always of course but ultimately that was an understandable hardware limitation that would later be solved with the creation of memory cards. Thanks to things like Free Mcboot, we are able to back up all of our PS1/PS2 saves to PC. Sure you can also back up your PS3 saves to PC as well but not the digital games sadly which leads me to another issue I want to address.

You see digital gaming has been around on PC for quite a while now and measures have been taken to future proof them. Places like GOG sell DRM free games which means that you can easily back them up. Consoles don’t have this luxury and this is a huge problem. Now I’m not saying that this isn’t an issue on PC because it is. Who knows what will happen when Steam disappears, what will happen to our games? These are questions that the PC gaming community have been asking for years and is the reason why sites like GOG exist in the first place. It’s all about that careful balance between piracy prevention and future proofing and I still think there’s a lot of work to find that balance but consoles are the least likely to take action in this regard as console manufacturers have zero interest in future proofing and quite frankly, future proofing is detrimental to their business practices as they want people to buy their new console every generation so they don’t want people to play on their old systems. PC gaming is a whole different ball game since there isn’t a sole manufactuer in control of it. Sure you have Microsoft’s OS monopoly to deal with but other than that, it’s practically no man’s land. With consoles, the company controls everything you can do on the platform.

Now I’m not gonna lie, I am a supporter of physical games, however I rarely ever buy games physically nowadays since PC doesn’t tend to offer them anymore. I still buy physical games for older consoles though since they still work, plus I like to collect them since I have some sentimentality with older hardware. Thing is, many people argue that consoles are better than PC because they still have physical games… but for how long? The new Xbox has a model that doesn’t feature a disk drive, showing that they are testing the market, they are planning to get rid of physicals people, they just don’t want to start an uproar. By buying an Xbox Series S, you are proposing to kill off physical games. Thing is that ultimately, if you’re going to do that then you might as well just get a gaming PC because we have more competition in the digital market which is yet another fact that console gamers don’t seem to realize. So physical console gamers, I feel your pain, I really do because my PS3 will no longer load my PS3 disks into the disk drive, so much for physical games huh? As for you digital console guys, you are probably the same people who complain that PC gaming is too expensive, well I’m about to debunk that argument too. With the amount of money you lot spend on your online paywalls and your games, you could have bought a gaming PC with that money instead. The point is that while the entry fee is undeniably higher than that of consoles, it is an investment. The money you spend on your PC is recuperated by the money you save on the games purchased on digital storefronts due to the competitive nature of the PC gaming market, that and you also do not have to pay a monthly fee to play games online every month which means that you have better cashflow, therefore you save a ton of money every year. By that point you will have saved more by buying PC than you did by buying a console.

Now I get that many of you console gamers are impatient because believe me, if you weren’t impatient then this industry would have crashed back in 2011. The thing is that your impatience is what has caused this industry to thrive and become complacent. Of course if you want to buy every single game day 1 at launch, expecting it to run perfectly, you’re going to need to get an absolute monster of a PC but if you wait patiently like I do, you will never ever have that problem and you never have to upgrade your PC, you can just stick with what you have and gain access to new indie titles that are cheap, run on outdated systems and chances are, you’ll probably be getting more enjoyment out of them than the AAA trash that gets released nowadays. This causes your expenses to decrease drastically, once you get over that initial hurdle of investing in a PC, you now have more options when it comes to gaming on a budget. There are sites that sell several games for £1 people, it’s crazy how low the value of games is today and if you’re a console gamer, you will never know how worthless games are nowadays because you still have to deal with the inflated prices of the Platstation store or whatever storefront you use.

Now there is a light at the end of the tunnel thankfully and that light is the steam deck, however this does not solve the issue of exclusivity. People will still buy consoles just to play their exclusive games and this is the last and final line of defense we need to penetrate in order to eliminate all reason to own a game console and it is certainly a problem for PC gamers such as myself who enjoy Japanese games because Japanese publishers are infuriatingly stubborn and refuse to release games on PC because they fear they will get pirated and that there’s no audience for it. This is the reason why I made the console exclusives are bullshit video.

Now whether or not exclusivity truly is their last line of defense will be decided by the reception of the Steam Deck. If the steam deck fails then that proves that consoles are obsolete. if it succeeds however, perhaps there is a future for consoles after all, just without the exclusives. My point is that console exclusives need to disappear, every game should be cross platform now, there’s no excuse. Games are available digitally now and therefore they should be built for all formats, we’re no longer living in an era where physical formats are the only means of playing videogames people.

So with all this said, console gaming can go fuck itself. Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony are proving themselves to be bigger cunts with every passing day. The more I see them, the more I hate them, the more exclusives that get released on their platform, the more bitter I become. My cynicism will not end till all of this is sorted out. Fuck this industry it’s a piece of shit.

Metroid Vs Castlevania – Button Mappers Video Response