What Did We Play Yesterday?

Let's talk about the anus of my new fav, shall we?

I was unaware of the Nier: Automata's plethora of panty shots or the B2 butthole controversy prior to purchasing the game. A few months ago, a rumor began circulating that the model had a rendered butthole. Yes, that actually happened, this is my life.

When questioned about the game's panty shots, Yoko Taro said something like, "I like to draw pretty girls." In certain quarters this has been held up as an example of bravery in the face of oppression.

(I know, I know. They basically write the jokes for you.)

Anyway, I like B2's design a lot, even though her dress looks bad in side-profile because the developer's insistence on enabling maximum panty exposure at all times results in weird dress poof-levitation. What I don't like is the What Are You Doing? achievement, which is apparently triggered after the player attempts to look up B2's skirt 10 times. If done correctly, B2 notices the player's gaze and pushes the camera away.

Like. Can we not, please?

On the plus side, knowing I can't 100 percent the game takes some of the pressure off. I mean, seriously, fully upgrading all 40 weapons? That's just mean.

There are apparently 3 versions of MEA floating around.

It seems like critics have been fairly in-line for the most part. One reviewer said MEA was Inquisition in space and another explicitly said MEA was not Inquisition in space, which was a little confusing, but overall, it's clear they're all playing the same game. (My takeaway: lots of Inquisition-style questing and item collection, a soft ending [e.g. the player can continue playing after the ending], and hours upon hours of side-quest content.) Queerbaiting is being rightly panned on Tumblr. I think there was some confusion over one male character in particular and that character has now been confirmed straight. It doesn't actually make sense for aliens to be "straight" in terms of attraction to humans, but that's another post I guess.

Meanwhile, the Dudebro contingent tanked MEA's metacritic score, and for a group who is so upset over the politicization of games, their reasons for hating the game are overwhelmingly political and generally only skim issues with gameplay and story. My favorite: "the females" do not have enough white presets.

This is actually one of the reasons why I do not understand why publishers insist on catering to this demographic. It is textbook gamer entitlement, right down to finding the one woman responsible for all of their problems so they can threaten to rape her. Everyone knows that a 0 or 1 on metacritic is a protest rating and is therefore worthless. 0 or 1 should mean the game actually does not function or the player cannot play without crashing, and that's clearly not the case since these guys played long enough to realize there aren't enough white people in space.

Personally, I do not want to play DAI again and it does sound like the MEA team took a huge nod from Inquisition's "gotta catch em all" approach to content. What MEA has going for it is the story mode. So if I decide I'd like to enjoy a little Ryder weird-face for myself and I get tired of the reported 130 hours of gameplay I can skip to the chase. I like knowing that I have direct control over how much of a slog a huge RPG is.

Update #2:

Thoughts:

One of my favorite Just Gamer Things is discovering a game very shortly before or after launch and realizing I have a need, a yearning deep in the marrow of my bones, pure and righteous in the eyes of God. It's hype in its purest form, unsullied by fandom and the pain of living.

For instance, Nier: Automata. I'd never heard of it until a week ago. My interest is fueled solely by the experiences of actual human beings who have played the game. I haven't seen any official marketing of any kind. It's the excitement of a big upcoming release condensed within a reasonable span of time and emotion. Feels good man Let's go punch a Nazi or whatever it is we're saying now.

Release day on Steam is always a party, however things go. My new operating policy requires reading zero-day reviews before purchase, so this thing could go the way of Dishonored 2, who knows.

While glancing at the Steam forum to see if anyone knew about potential performance issues, I saw a few comments along the lines of, "However it performs, we should just be grateful..." Yeah, nah. You all gotta stop with that. Don't buy broke shit. I love games too but let's don't. I cannot think of any other type of consumer good where people actually encourage others to buy products that don't work to support the manufacturer. Can you imagine?

"This hybrid doesn't handle well and they lied about the MPG but if we don't support them they won't release any more cars in the United States."

sure ok enjoy your parking space or whatever

* They get parking spaces, right? I drive a 1998 pickup so I have no idea.

** Holy shit I just realized my car is almost 20 years old D:

*** Excuse me I'm going to sit quietly in the corner and contemplate my mortality until my game drops bye

UPDATE:
*inarticulate screaming*

I honestly don't know where to start with Virginia.

I don't like the term "walking simulator" because to me it implies a) no player agency, total rails and b) a chore or task akin to walking on a treadmill, some exercise that must be done for bodily health and not out of enjoyment. Most of the walking simulators I've played aren't like that, and so I call them exploratory games. Virginia is really more of an interactive movie, but in this case, I wouldn't begrudge anyone who calls it a walking simulator, because it does a great job of meeting both criteria.

The graphics are lovely, the music is nice, and the story starts out very promising with a nice Twin Peaks/The X-Files vibe. The main character, Anne, is a young FBI agent who has been assigned her first case, an internal investigation.

The protagonist's movements are limited and the player figures out early-on you can't really get off the rails, but there is a little wiggle room for exploration. There is some text in Virginia, but no dialogue. While this creates an interesting atmosphere, it also forces the writers to rely heavily on visual cues. I think, if the writers knew what they were doing, dialogue would have helped, but they clearly don't know what they're doing so not shelling out for voice actors was probably a good call. While the graphics are lovely, some of the environments end up feeling conspicuously empty. For example, several of the house interiors are filled with blank pictures. This breaks immersion and feels weird when the player is relying almost exclusively on the environments and models for storytelling.

Around the halfway point, Virginia stumbles because it descends into dreams and symbolism. It isn't thought-provoking or interesting, just confusing. Things that sort-of worked before, like the quick-cut ending of scenes, now add to the confusion. The last 30 minutes or so were monotony.

If that wasn't bad enough, this is another one of those fuck-you cheevos situations. At least one achievements requires two full playthroughs back-to-back, including sitting through the exorbitantly long credits. I made a point of trying to explore scenes as much as possible before they abruptly cut off and I only discovered 3 of the exploratory ones naturally. Boo.

So I'm at the end of this game, feeling pretty damn salty, and whooooooooooooo should pop up on my monitor but 505 Games, the publisher of Abzu. Thanks for reminding me! My Fuck Abzu post shall be forthcoming.

Edit: OH MY GOd it has a 15-card set. ooooh you bastards

Yesterday I was puttering around Steam looking for something to play and I discovered Danmaku Unlimited 3 dropped Thursday. It's twice as much. Maybe cause it's twice as good. It's challenging, the boss patterns are creative and tricky. The djent kinda blurs together for me, to be honest, but I can dig it.

One thing that is a little different, at least to me, is that both spirit mode (the easier mode) and graze mode have auto-bombs only. Spirit mode has an auto-trace default--I have no idea why anyone would want that--but you can turn it off. They dropped DU2's upgrade system for a unlockable weapon system, and you earn additional bombs and credits as you play. It is kind of interesting to play a bullet hell hot off the presses when it's new and fresh and we're all starting from the same place.

As far as I can tell, DU3 surpasses Danmaku Unlimited 2 in all respects. THAT BEING SAid DU2 is currently on sale for $1 on Steam.

I've begun powergaming Stardew Valley for some godawful reason* please save me from myself.

*10 million gold achievement don't look at me i'm not cryi ng