"Belmonts live by two rules: Run Right, and Kill Everything"
After the somber, possibly even overly-sentimental, heavy material of my last entry, I thought I might touch on something a bit lighter, but still dear to my heart.
But let me preface by saying...
Modern gamers are just spoiled, babied pussies.
Why does the Bard say this? Well, that's a complicated answer, but in short, let's start with some background information:
The Bard is a diehard fan of Castlevania as a franchise. He has been since the very early nineties, when on his old Ninetendo Entertainment System (one of the damned finest pieces of technology ever wrought by human hands!) he picked up (in a trend that would travel with him all his gaming life to date), Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse -- the trend being a noted habit of playing sequels before originals.
Now, this will not be a long retrospective on a franchise nearly old as I am, you can find a good number of those elsewhere on the web, and nor will this be covering in-depth the series known in its native Japan as Demon Castle Dracula (well, once the real name, Akumajo Dracula, is translated into English, at least), as there are equally plentiful sources for the good reader to learn of the series if they do not know of it.
No, this is mainly concerning some things I've heard scattered around various web sounding boards on the newest release in this venerable franchise, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.
It seems that the game is too hard and thus, to some pansy-assed minds, sucks.
Now hey, as I said previously, I'm a big fan of peoples' rights to their opinions, and their rights to express them in a public forum such as cyberspace.
But by the same ticket, I have the right to call them whiny fucking pussies for their opinions.
See, I recently purchased a Nintendo DS -- a holiday gift to myself, and I am loving the quirky little system -- my opinions of Nintendo's place in the current generation of the Console Wars may not be very generous, but I will never deny they have always ruled like fat little kings over the portable handheld market -- and with the little system with its quaint two screens and its touch-screen stylus, I bought a copy of Ecclesia.
"What a terrible night to have a curse."
Curse, indeed.. especially if that curse is being too much of a student of the modern age to not appreciate good, old-fashioned, old school gaming. Especially if they are quote-unquote "experts" on the series.
If they were experts like they claim, they'd know that Ecclesia is a shout-out to we old guards of gaming the likes I've not seen since Magic: the Gathering's "Time Spiral" block.
Those of us not too young to remember (and too lazy to look into the hobby's history or a franchise's past) will know the ways of Old School well. We didn't have the flashy, newfangled high-polygon count models or digital FMV -- fuck, I can remember when FMV was a mark of almost-assured craptitude! -- to sell games. They had to sell themselves on merits of gameplay (something I wish more games would actually do, these days) or in the very least a hot license to sucker in the mass-market on what was generally a sub-par cash-in (something alive and well today that I wish would take a long walk off a short cliff). The magic balance was key -- the game could not roll over and die -- but nor could it make you put your blocky little non-ergonomic controller into your huge, bulky television's screen.
....well it could, but that did tend to hurt sales all-around since good televisions cost a pretty penny even then.
Modern gamers expect to have anything not involving a puzzle roll over and die for them if they mash a few buttons. They expect games to yield to them so as not to bruise their pretty little egos. So when a game comes along that has that magic balance, and actually expects you to kick ass old-school and not just blindly swing at something until its dead, maybe interspacing the odd block or dodge for flavoring to break button-mashing monotony... it must suck!
No my friend.. the game does not suck... you just suck.
But as I said, if you need to be able to effortlessly rape a game ten ways to next Thursday to be able to feel big about your "leet skillz".. that's your business.
Just don't belittle one of the best games I've played in ages because it beat your pussy ass and hurt your widdle feewings, and don't try to pass yourself off as an 'expert' if you can't say three sentences without sending up poseur flags to all of us real veterans.
Just go play God of War on Mortal mode again. Kratos will hide his scorn for you.
But the Bard will not!
"Hear me, Dracula! I am the morning sun, come to vanquish this horrible night!"See? Less serious!
Regards, and be excellent to each other.
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