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Who’s ready to return to monke?
I primarily play classic video games. Partly, it is childhood imprinting, but largely the reason is that I cannot stand bloat in games. Good gameplay mechanics trump “story” anytime, in particular if the latter means that I get lectured about the ills of capitalism and the superiority of women.
Epic Games is seemingly the only Western developer able to put a decent ass on a female character. The chick below is from Fortnite, incidentally one of the most successful games of our time.
https://preview.redd.it/n6glbp80pwgd1.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=c1d05846a13cf6f3cf591466174b2359ffa72644
Black Myth: Wukong is a smashing success, achieving a concurrent player count on Steam of over 1.4m. This is far above any other single player game, and close to double the numbers the faggotized Western big budget game Baldur’s Gays 3 reached, and about 50% above CyberPunk 2077. Of course, it cannot be the case that people are fed-up with pozzed Western games.
https://i.ibb.co/VW2JZv2/alltime.png
Holy shit, this game is based:
https://www.eurogamer.net/black-myth-wukong-studio-requests-influencers-not-include-feminist-propaganda-or-covid-19-references-in-coverage
Also, the Steam reviews are overwhelmingly positive currently.
Also based, I was watching this Asmond video about some journalists whining about the quality and success of the game basically:
https://youtu.be/8aILFKVTNgc?si=uvcyksFDNnNn_arg
There’s a very important lesson in here. Apparently, some devs at Game Science are on record for making sexist statements on the past, but when reached out to by snotty entitled journalists they simply replied with “no comment” twice. Not feeding into this nonsense is one of the most effective ways to navigate this type of situation, and also super easy.
Imagine the chutzpah of opening an interview with a statement similar to, “Black Myth: Wukong may be a graphically impressive game with seemingly at least competent-enough gameplay. However, what we really are concerned about are some of the statements representatives of your studio have made regarding women.” I would much prefer if Western studios got their act together again and produced games people actually want to buy instead of one dud after another. On that note, the Sony-funded shooter Concord will be released within 48 hours. Chances are that it will be an even bigger commercial disaster than Suicide Squad, Avengers, and Skull and Bones. Amusingly, Skull and Bones will be released on Steam tomorrow, about half a year after its debut on Epic Games. In the past, we had the problem that sometimes too many hit games were released at the same day or within one or two weeks of each other. Today, there are so many flops that you can be glad when they get released simultaneously as they will be forgotten sooner as a consequence.
“While the do’s simply reads “enjoy the game”, the don’ts includes a number of caveats. “Do not insult other influencers or players” and “do not use any offensive language/humour” are both understandable, *but other requests are far more political.*” [emphasis mine]
“In full, the don’ts are:
Do NOT insult other influencers or players.
Do NOT use any offensive language/humour.
Do NOT include politics, violence, nudity, feminist propaganda, fetishisation, and other content that instigates negative discourse.
Do NOT use trigger words such as ‘quarantine’ or ‘isolation’ or ‘Covid-19’.
Do NOT discuss content related to China’s game industry policies, opinions, news, etc.
”
Calling these things “political” is telling. When trying to avoid politics is itself political, it means you live in a totalitarian society.
AJ, what did you read exactly?
“Calling these things “political” is telling. When trying to avoid politics is itself political, it means you live in a totalitarian society.”
I don’t see where anyone is calling the list of items political, only that there is one among several criteria that states to avoid discussing politics. Also, it seems to only be a request from the developers, not a threat that the player will be banned. Though, what they do to Chinese gamers for breaking the rules is unknown, it doesn’t raise occasion for criticism for me. I’m more concerned about native Brits being jailed for posting anti-Islamic rhetoric on facebook while Muslim gangs openly stroll the streets with melee weapons without a second glance from authorities.
What I see from Game Science is an attempt to grant consumers a space where they can enjoy an action game without any pretenses, and while doing so maximizing the game’s success in this highly polarized climate that has become gaming.
@Pickernanny I was quoting from the eurogamer article, not bashing anything the game devs did.
My bad AJ, I have extreme brain fog from quitting caffeine everyday for the last ten years.
This game peaked at over 2.3m concurrent users, which is absolutely incredible. Only one game has ever done better on Steam, the infamous PUBG, which is free to play, whereas Black Myth: Wukong has a standard big-budget single-player-game price tag. Surely, a lot of Western game journalists are not happy about this at all.
I have the game on my list. Apparently, however, there seems to be some concern with the glowing reviews so far. A lot of them are supposedly in simplified Chinese and focusing on national pride rather than the actual content of the game, and with less than an hour of playtime to boot. I don’t so far doubt the quality of the game, but I have to wonder if there is something artificial happening, at least to some extent.
I saw a breakdown of reviews by country of origin somewhere, and even though the Chinese are by far the biggest player demographic, people seem to generally like this game a lot. It will be a while before I will own hardware that can run this game, so I am not too bothered by any kind of manipulation. The game undoubtedly looks extremely good. Even if it is not the best character-action game ever, it surely will be worth a play-through, similar to Stellar Blade.
@Pickernanny no worries, I should’ve said what I was quoting from.
@AJ
“It will be a while before I will own hardware that can run this game”
You could just get a cloud gaming service like GeForce Now provided you have good bandwidth.
“Black Myth: Wukong may be a graphically impressive game with seemingly at least competent-enough gameplay. However, what we really are concerned about are some of the statements representatives of your studio have made regarding women.”
These people need to be sent back to junior high and stuffed in lockers some more. I feel more respect for drunken winos lying in gutters.
“In the past, we had the problem that sometimes too many hit games were released at the same day or within one or two weeks of each other.”
I hadn’t thought of that, but how true and how sad. I remember BioWare delaying Mass Effect 3 from the 2011 Christmas season to the following spring so it wouldn’t clash with Skyrim. Of course, given how much better Skyrim was, this now feels almost like misplaced confidence.
https://x.com/Genki_JPN/status/1825708490406637707 Stellar blade coming to PC. Prepare for nude mods day 1 lol.
Final Fantasy XVI was recently also announced to be released for PC. Thus, the PS5 is losing arguably two of its three biggest exclusive games. The other one is the Demon’s Souls remake, which is more of a niche title. Spiderman 2 has been confirmed for PC already, and FF VII Rebirth will most certainly appear on Steam as well at some point, considering that FF VII Remake is on PC. Besides, sales are not great, so Square-Enix needs to put the game up on additional digital store fonts. Console gaming is quite a travesty nowadays. The only big exclusive the PS4 has is Bloodborne, and the biggest PS5 exclusive is a remake of a PS3 game. It seems that people nowadays mainly play the various GAAS titles like Genshin Impact and Fortnite, but these you can also play on a pretty cheap PC, which has many more benefits.
Look at how much fun we had in this industry in the past! Below, I am embedding a TV ad for Dead or Alive 3 that is ironically self-aware. That entire series has used very sexy female characters for decades, but the games are well-made. Yet, mainstream gaming journalists have been frothing at the mouth whenever this game is mentioned since at least the early 2000s due to the hypersexualization of adult women in this game. I am sure it would have gotten a pass had it featured underage girls.
I am currently playing Mario’s Picross for the original Game Boy. It it still a very good game. The first time I played through it was about six or seven years ago. If you like puzzles that require deductive reasoning, I warmly recommend it. Here is an old Nintendo ad, with a bit of sexual innuendo:
I enjoy seeing guys dedicating themselves to one game or franchise they really like. Here is someone who seems to have made it his life’s mission to grind away at Sega Rally Championship:
https://www.youtube.com/@SEGARALLYCHAMPIONSHIP
This guy makes the game look like it’s a blast, haha. I know that I’d be crashing into walls and running off the road on every turn probably.
Unrelated, but I stumbled upon this random arcade connected to a hole in the wall movie theater a little while back, and it had this game in it:
https://youtu.be/3EQbaRoUJGU?si=Jq5WOjr-590NLHH4
It was actually quite intense being seated in the driver’s seat. I must have looked real silly playing this!
I was not familiar with Dirty Drivin’. There is a bit too much going on for my liking but I can see the appeal, i.e. people playing it a few times for giggles, or parents feeling confident that their kids can spend a few minutes in there without seeing blood and boobs. The channel that hosts that video was new to me but it was worth skimming the content. That way, I learned that Xbox emulation seems to have progressed quite a bit, looking at the gameplay of House of the Dead III and Ghost Squad. For now, I am stuck in the 1990s, but there are a few arcade ports for the Xbox that could be worth checking out.
Funny you brought up HotD, because we just co-oped the remake last night on easy mode for a good time. I remember HotD II fondly from my childhood arcade days, though never played the first entry. I am not sure how the remake stacks up to the original but it certainly was fun.
The remake looks pretty good, but I did not play it. I am familiar with the Sega Saturn version of the original, but it is a pretty horrible port. I also really liked HotD 2, playing it on the Dreamcast. There is also a rather eccentric spin-off of HotD 2 called Typing of the Dead, which I liked quite a bit. You had to use the Dreamcast Keyboard with it.
Ah, I forgot all about TotD. I just remembered another game from back in the day, Time Crisis. I believe it had a foot pedal that let you take cover.
Netflix is working on a Tomb Raider anime. It looks about as good as you imagine:
https://imgur.com/a/l9ISAZM
Black Myth: Wukong vs. Forspoken:
https://x.com/Mangalawyer/status/1825783229573423232
The next Monster Hunter game is going to be pretty woke. On the plus side, there is one hot blonde chick in it:
I can indeed see why this game is compromised, but Japanese woke is generally (Forspoken exception) quite light on the woke scale compared to Western games. I’m not really familiar with these games, but would it be a mistake to call this franchise Capcom’s take on Dark Souls?
Sometimes people compare Monster Hunter to Dark Souls. However, Monster Hunter is far older than Dark Souls. It only broke into the mainstream with Monster Hunter: World. Originally, these games were hugely popular only in Japan and sold poorly in the West. There were even memes comparing mainstream JP games like Monster Hunter with mainstream Western slop like Call of Duty, with captions like “min. IQ120 required for Monster Hunter”. Of course, there was a lot of elitism around this series in the West. In all fairness, though, MH: World has been incredibly streamlined compared to previous entries. I gave MH4 Ultimate a shot a decade ago, quite liked it, but balked because I quickly realized that this is a game that would require dozens of hours of effort just to get a baseline level of competence. On a side note, I once interviewed an applicant from Japan, so I just had to ask him about Japanese gaming and the games he likes. This was a very smart guy who spoke excellent English, and I was not surprised when he told me that he used to play MH for hours a day as a teenager. Meanwhile, our teens play instant-gratification crap like Fortnite.
Did you end up hiring the Japanese fellow? It’s funny because I can imagine a scenario where a cunty feminist interviews while droning on and on about her masters degree and extensive travels, meanwhile the Japanese guy strolls in and talks about his many hours being holed up in his bedroom practicing Tetris. I mean, I know who I’d rather have on board. This is why women in HR is so crucial.
Yes, we hired him. For some reason, he wanted to live in Europe for a while.
Hiring is completely broken. In a supply-constrained field you can get jobs easily, so the interview process is basically just a formality but when the labor market is tough, those HR ditzes quickly lose touch with reality. One chick asked me what my favorite color was, another wanted to learn about how I have “championed diversity” in the past, and I have also had cases of these women flirting pretty hard with me. One slipped in one sexual innuendo after another, for instance asking me in a sultry voice how I “relax after work”. She barely asked me any job-related questions.
“Yes, we hired him. For some reason, he wanted to live in Europe for a while.”
I can perhaps see a scenario where a Japanese guy who happens to be a gamer might have some romanticized notions of Europe, not realizing what’s become of many of the countries.
“…another wanted to learn about how I have “championed diversity” in the past…”
LOL. Please tell us your response to that. I might have said something along the lines of, “well, every single day has been an opportunity to champion diversity. So many instances I cannot choose just one.”
I remember being asked silly questions like who I would meet if it could be any person living or not. Apparently, the purpose was to screen for decisiveness, which I don’t think is an accurate assessment of that trait at all personally.
If I was asked what person I wanted to meet, it would probably take me a while to come up with a normie-compatible name. Regarding the DIE question, I retold the completely true and definitely not totally made-up story of me helping a struggling female software engineer whose great ideas did not get the attention they deserved. Of course, my mentorship helped her a lot over the course of many months, and eventually I saw her get promoted to the level of senior software engineer. I had to buy some time in the beginning by stating that I could think of two or three, but needed a moment to decided which one would best showcase my commitment to the DIE cult.
“Of course, my mentorship helped her a lot over the course of many months, and eventually I saw her get promoted to the level of senior software engineer.”
That sounds pretty demoralizing honestly. Everything is moving towards being based on identity instead of merit.
This is actually what happens in tech. Women get promotions merely for being there. I have seen bizarre decisions such as promoting a woman who was on a long maternity leave. These companies have internal target percentages for women at each level and whenever there is a gap, women advance so fast it makes your head spin. I once saw a woman get four promotions in three years. Well, but what do I know? Perhaps she really was the best software engineer or manager the industry has ever seen.
We had this big thuggin’ hospitalist once, and it got to the point where when you contacted him you basically had to tell him the situation and then tell him what to order, otherwise nothing meaningful would get done. To give one of the worst examples, a patient was in tachycardia (I think they had just had surgery and were becoming septic) and he said to give them some IV benzos to calm them down. It was really embarrassing because the patient’s husband was a pharmacist and was outraged by the order. We got the situation resolved after getting house supervisor involved.
I wonder how many people die in hospitals based on the utter incompetence of some of the people working in this environment. Supposedly, this is par for the course in clown world. Boeing airplanes are falling out of the sky, software updates brick your computer, Intel produces chips with flaws and does not bother fixing them in future revisions, and Tyrone gives everybody bezos to calm them down, regardless of their condition. Looking at the big picture, it all fits wonderfully together.
The Callisto Protocol is free for one week at Epic:
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/the-callisto-protocol
Assuming they never optimized this game for PC, it’s not even worth getting for free.
To no one’s surprise the next big woke release is a complete failure: Dustborn has less than 100 concurrent players on Steam. On Metacritic, it sits on a 0.9/10.0 user score. Probably many more game studios need to get shut down for the woke cancer to disappear. Meanwhile, there are 12 million people waiting to play the waifu simulator Infinity Nikki.
Dustborn looks like pure bottom of the barrel slop. Yet, this is great news to see it doing so poorly!
A quick look at Infold Games’ LinkedIn profile reveals they’re from Singapore. This is indeed the dark ages of gaming for the West, and to a lesser extent Japan.
Singapore has virtually no track record in gaming. Infold essentially puts them on the map. The only other Singaporean game I am aware of is Skull and Bones, made by Ubisoft Singapore. That game bombed hard.
PS4 emulation has been making impressive progress. Bloodborne is running quite well, apparently at hundreds of frames per second on a beefy PC. While shader emulation seems to be quite incomplete, it is obvious that a decent PC has no problem with rendering the geometry. I would not be surprised if it is already possible to complete the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK8xIvfIdEs