Like I mentioned on social media, I'm going to try to make this a weekly affair, doing this roughly once or possibly twice a week to give this blog some weekly regular content.
Annual Pattern of the Hype Train for the newest WWE game (WWE 2K16)
- Roster Reveal (along with pre-order bonus) as part of Summerslam weekend, everyone is either pissed off, disappointed, or extremely optimistic
THQ2K Sports give out minimal information on changes and/or improvements, oftentimes announce "new" features, which tend to be old features that were taken out in favor of other features- Season Pass DLC details announced
- Early reviews cite nothing wrong with the game, often citing it's miles better than the previous year's title
- Release Day comes, players deem title as the best wrestling game EVAR
- Glitches and bugs begin to pile up from other players across message boards, such as on Caws.ws - some players remain optimistic that 2K will patch out these bugs, glitches, and shortcomings
- No patch to fix bugs happens - players begin to "boycott" the next WWE game
- Next WWE game announced, same boycotters are back buying it like there's nothing wrong only to repeat this same process again
Hell, I've bought just about every Assassin's Creed game (well up to Black Flag) but at least I'm not dumb enough to buy at launch. I get them when they hit the bargain bin. I'll never understand how people keep falling for the "annual rehash" hype yet never want to admit that they are wasting their hard-earned money buying these annual releases at launch. The kicker with the WWE games is the worst as you're paying $60 plus the $20-30 extra for the Season Pass.
Dhalsim Confirmed for Street Fighter V
The game has been announced for a Feb. 16, 2016 release date and that sounds about right from previous launches from the last few SF titles. Capcom likes to give the competitive scene just enough time to squeeze out months in the grind for the Evolution Championship Series that following summer, so don’t be surprised that Ultra Street Fighter IV goes the way of the dinosaurs next year as a result of the new title. Hell, I would be surprised if BOTH Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 AND Ultra Street Fighter IV are on the EVO line-up next year.
Everyone keeps asking me how come I’m not “hyped” for this game and I’m looking at it like this. I wasted SEVEN years of my life and god-knows how much money on DLC and what-not on 4 versions of Street Fighter 4 since the initial purchase. As it stands, I’m not repeating that mistake and I’m just going to wait around for the “Ultra” or “Super” edition with all of the DLC right out of the box. I’m getting sick of giving gaming companies my hard-earned cash just to hand it back to them in form of DLC and add-ons because they don’t want to sell me a COMPLETED game at launch.
Besides, I’m not even really worrying about that right now as I’m still on last-gen hardware anyway…
Fight Money can Be Earned via Daily Challenges and Leveling Up Characters in Street Fighter V
Get the fuck out of here, Capcom. Not everyone is going to be able to benefit from this shit and you know it. Capcom is marketing this crap like it’s going to be easy for EVERYONE to earn all of the DLC in-game just by grinding it out. Nah, I’m not falling for this shit, especially after they announced that there’s going to be SIX additional characters at launch via DLC. Bitch please, this is going to be a “nicer” version of on-disk DLC that they attempted to pull with Street Fighter X Tekken.Tekken 7 Announced for PlayStation 4
Big whoop. Tekken is a PlayStation staple, plain and simple. I would’ve been shocked that if it ended up a Xbox One exclusive when that console doesn’t do well in Japan at all. The better question is what is Namco going to do to make this title push sales when it’s barely a blip on the radar currently on the competitive tournament scene. If you ask me, it looked extremely boring at EVO this past year and I can’t see myself racing out to buy this one like I did the last two games in the series. I like Tekken as much as the next guy but that’s another bargain bin purchase for me just like Mortal Kombat at this rate.
I see this “final” chapter as the equivalent of Soul Calibur V. The hardcore crowd are going to race out and buy Tekken no matter what it is – good, bad, or ugly. They aren’t going to care what the critics say because Tekken is what gets their rocks off. This way Namco can do low numbers with the game and return a reasonable profit for they can say that they made enough to justify the console release.
The casual crowd will stick around for the flavor of the month (or week in this case) period and move on after the next over-hyped AAA title tickles their fancy.
I have to agree with the comments online that state that Harada is killing his own franchise. What is there to get hype about a game that’s already dying in the arcades? Ono came up at Sony’s press conference with a TON of SF5 related news and this fool goes AFTER him with a trailer that looks like some random fans on YouTube made for a school project.
Playboy Announces No More Nudes
(Busts out laughing) So let me get this straight… The magazine that Hugh Hefner has built an empire to is going to remove their defining feature and selling point? On one side I can’t blame them as nudes and porn so fucking easy to come by for free in this modern age, but at the same time, it’s going to feel like that episode of Family Guy where Peter was buying those “marriage help” VHS tapes that ended up having porn in them with the girl stripping down to next to nothing then as SOON as she’s about to take everything off she puts all of her clothes back on and instructs Peter to buy the next tape – which was more expensive than the last. |
| On Family Guy, Dr. Amanda Rebecca cleverly disguised her pornography videos as relationship help tapes that Peter was hooked to watching. |
I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of shocked people that learn that Playboy actually has articles to read instead of just pictures. In all seriousness though, with just about every other magazine trying to do nudes or stuff that’s as close to nudes without pissing the censors off, I can understand why they want to get out of that market and distinguish themselves with something different for a new generation. Hugh Hefner isn’t going to be around forever and we ALL know he’s had his fun.
TV SHOWS I’m Currently Watching
- Agents of SHIELD – Season 3 or 4?
I forget which but whatever. The number one thing that has me wondering watching this season is how in the hell are they going to drag out this whole Inhumans subplot until the Inhumans movie comes out? There’s only so much stuff they can cover until they have to bring the Royal Family (Black Bolt, Medusa, Maximus the Mad, etc.) at some point, but it seems like they are doing more ground-work for the Civil War movie than anything. I adore Skye… or rather Daisy/Quake’s evolution of her character from season to season and it’s good to see her growing into the role of this character. She’s coming off more comfortable in the role than merely that quirky, wise-cracking female archetype she was in the first two seasons.I have absolutely NO idea who or what they are going with that Rosalind character as I never seen her before or am remotely aware who she is supposed to be. I’m guessing that she’s another one-off character created specifically for this series much like Raina was in the last two seasons.
- CW's The Flash – Season 2
My biggest complaint right now is don’t make every season into a fight versus another “evil” Speedster. While I’m glad to see that Harrison Wells is back thanks to the multi-verse plot, this show needs to fight its own legs. As it stands, I can’t see this going as long as Arrow or Smallville like most fans are hoping. They are going to run out of steam quickly if they throw all of their trump cards now.I can tell that the series writers want to be doing Spider-Man more than this. There’s so many parallels to Spider-Man’s universe (especially the older animated series and comics) that it’s not even funny. Barry is juggling with a potential love-triangle (Peter Parker/Spider-Man ALWAYS had a love triangle going on, whether it was with girls who were in love with Spidey and not Peter or vice versa), Iris with the estranged parent coming back into her life after she became a successful journalist (Mary Jane had to deal with her estranged father coming back into her life after becoming a successful actress), an enemy from another dimension wants to ruin all time and all reality (Wasn’t that the series finale plot for the FOX Kids’ animated series and the plot Shattered Dimensions video game, the Spider-Verse storyline in the comics last year, AND Season 2-3 of the Ultimate Spider-Man: Web Warriors cartoon?), and a former enemy turned ally or friends turned into supervillains (that’s almost every comic book superhero story underneath the sun but still…)?
Can we go ahead and start booting people off of The Flash support team? It was cool when it was Officer West, Dr. Wells, Cisco, and Caitlin in season 1, but now it’s a little TOO crowded with Jay, one half of Firestorm (with the other half being replaced/added either tonight or later this season), Iris, Patty, and potentially this multiverse version of Dr. Wells. It’s looking like Barry Allen can’t do anything without his friends. I mean, c’mon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer had the whole “Scooby gang” of companion characters but Buffy was a mere mortal with no powers other than her ass-kickery as the Slayer. Barry has fucking superpowers man.
BTW King Shark looked fake as fuck during the end of last week's episode. Just sayin'...
- Heroes: Reborn
After the revelation about Katana Girl, I can’t be surprised that the writing for this show is weak as fuck. I’m only watching just out of curiosity to see where it ends up at. Are they going to end it properly and let it die/rest or will they try to whore this out for another full blown series? I hope it’s NOT the latter.I think the coolest character is the masked luchalibre-inspired character, just from the fact that it seems like he doesn’t have any powers at all. Second place goes to the guy who was trying to kill himself after finding out he was an Evo too after spending much of his free time hunting down and killing Evos with his wife after the death of their own son. Other than that there’s FAR too many boring ideas for powers in this series now. The teleportation users (why have TWO now??), someone who negates the powers of everyone nearby, invisibility/intangibility, and the ability to self-duplicate are just cheap cop-outs to hide a low-budget production. You can tell they pretty much blew their budget on that whole thing for Katana Girl’s narrative, which didn’t look all that great to begin with.
- iZombie
Here’s my thing with this show. I naturally love the characters, especially since the series protagonist was a former Power Ranger who is finding success in another show, but OMFG the actual detective work of this show is fucking boring. I haven’t gone through a single episode yet in the first damn season that hasn’t made me fall asleep for a few minutes because I knew where it was going. Call me spoiled from shows like Bones that does the detective work a bit more interesting than this, but the whole hook that she (as a zombie) becomes what she eats in terms of brains needs a little more substance than this.It bums me out that I have SOO many friends who rave about this show and I just really can’t get invested into it. I'm going to keep watching here and there but it's not a high priority to me at the moment.
- The Walking Dead
I’m just merely watching out of curiosity to see if they are EVER going to end this thing. After the TellTale Games of the same name toyed with my emotions for two seasons, I’m not going to allow this show get the best of me. I know better now. Nothing is sacred, at least not to the degree of Attack on Titan, but at the same time, I can’t feel anything for these characters in the least. Just because you get a sob story about “I got a wife and kid waiting for me back home” doesn’t mean you’re going to make it out of this mess alive.I do want to note that this show has some of the most bad ass chicks in this genre – a ninja grandma (Carol) and an ebony katana-welding zombie killing machine (Michonne) for starters.
Like I’ve said countless times to friends who are OBSESSED about this show, as much as you want to watch this and pretend that you are so hardcore that you would be able to survive in a world like this, I’m sorry I’m going to be EXTREMELY honest and say that the best ending for this show is to have everyone blow their brains out before the zombies get them. I get it, the hook is the thrill of the hunt and seeing what mankind would do when backed into the corner in order to survive, but this is the type of world with absolutely no happy endings. It’s downright fucking depressing to be quite honest. You either survive long enough to get the zombies to tear you limb from limb, get stabbed in the back by other people who are trying to survive and watch out for their own skin, or ultimately, just give up and just say fuck it as you off yourself.
I do find it ironic that this series is going to the levels of Resident Evil absurdity when people said that series needs to scale it back a notch. I wonder if people are going to be saying the same about this show in another year or two.
Anime/Manga and Cartoons I’m watching/reading/revisiting:
- Mobile Fighter G Gundam – As you have noticed last week, I spent about a week and a half revisiting G Gundam. Watching that again brought back a lot of great memories and reminded me that there’s a LOT more Gundam model kits and figures from that series I needed to my personal Amazon wishlist.- Mobile Suit Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans – I have only seen the first two or three episodes but it's a breath of fresh air so far. If you want to see it, good luck as even the subtitled episodes are a little hard to hunt down after release every Sunday.
- Akame ga Kill!! – Finally sat down and watched the Halloween marathon on Toonami last night and I have to say that the English dub voices are hit or miss. Izumi (Fullmetal Alchemist) as Esdeath? That took a while to get used to. I dunno if I will bother watching this in English even though I'm at the same point where Toonami is in subtitles.
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