Video Game Tuesday: A Note on Review Scores

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m answering a question I was asked a few days back. It’s A Note on Review Scores!

Review Scores?: First off if you don’t read my game reviews on GiN, this post won’t really affect you. That being said I ask that you do take a look at them if you can. Now regarding my review scores I’ve been asked why I’ve given several games 0’s, either in certain categories or just across the board in general. I have good reasons for doing that, and they fall into generally three categories, as I’ve only done it 3 times, although the third time the developers actually fixed the issue before my review was posted so I went back and didn’t give 0s across the board like I intially did.

My First Reason: Playing the game, Coffin Dodgers, made me physically ill. I couldn’t play it for more than 15 minutes before I got so sick I had to run to the bathroom to throw up. I don’t get motion sickness in general, though I do get it on extreme cases like very twisty roads like the Road to Hana on Maui. So I gave that game some 0s for it’s score. If it didn’t have frame rate issues, with multiple frames missing each second I would have been fine and I’d probably have enjoyed the game quite a bit.

My Second Reason: Plagiarism and Laziness, Sword and Fairy 6 is a Chinese RPG that was utter crap. It had terrible localization, plagiarized the hell out of Starcraft out of sheer laziness and was in general unplayable, period. It had frame-rate issues, the opening cinematic was utter nonsense and the very first on screen tutorials had multiple instances of improper grammar on just one screen. Games are made by people who should take pride in their work, if I don’t see that in the game, I have very little reasons to score it favorably.

My Third Reason: Being unbeatable, literally. Star Horizon is a game I reviewed very recently and it’s 8th level was literally unbeatable. They didn’t include certain enemy targets in that mission which led to mission failure, nothing I did fixed that issue until they patched it a couple weeks later. If a game isn’t actually beatable, I don’t care how amazing the story and gameplay might be, I’m going to give the game 0’s and advise people to avoid it like the plague.

I hope this clarified my stance on Review Scores.

TNT: I’m Really a Superstar Chapters 1-40 by Chang Yu

This week for Translation Necessary Thursday I’m covering a series I just started reading the other week! It’s I’m Really a Superstar Chapters 1-40 by Chang Yu!

Plot Synopsis: Zhang Ye was originally a mundane college graduate, cursed with below average looks and height but with aspiring dreams of becoming famous. However one day, he woke up and suddenly found himself in a parallel world! In this new world, most things were similar to his previous world but there existed subtle differences, be it: brands, celebrities or even famous works!

Armed with the knowledge of his previous world and a heaven-defying Game Ring that gives him magical items, stats and skills, Zhang Ye embarks on a journey to pursue his life-long dream of becoming a celebrity.Follow Zhang Ye as he takes the new world by storm, one plagiarized piece at a time, to hilarious reactions!

Plot: These first forty chapters are Zhang Ye’s foundation building chapters and while the real hilarity hasn’t even begun, these chapters are still hilarious. I laughed so hard I cried about every other chapter. If that doesn’t tell you how good this is, I can’t help you.

Characters: Zhang Ye is an amazing main character, he’s pretty fearless and doesn’t take crap from anyone, even if he’s a shameless thief. The rest of the cast is great as well, I particularly like Rao Aimin his landlady. She’s very, very vicious with her tongue and I love it.

Overall: If you want to laugh, this is a must read series. I can’t state how much I love this series enough, stop reading my words and go read this series (for a while please, not forever).

For those who like: Comedy, Shamelessness, Drama, Slice of Life, Laughing, Waking Up Your Neighbors from Laughter, Amazing Cast of Characters, Fantastic Plot.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above, but if you hate all of that I feel really sad for you.

Video Game Tuesday: FFXIV vs P5000

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering the stupidity that was the uproar over a piece of music last week. It’s all about FFXIV vs P5000!

What’s this all about?: Well last week Final Fantasy XIV had their patch 3.2 launch with a new boss fight, Sephirot (no, not the long white haired dude), and some random YouTuber thought that the second phase of the fight’s musical score sounded familiar. Well it turns out it did sound familiar to some song by a band I hadn’t ever heard about, nor do I even care about still, Powerman 5000. The band in question made inflammatory remarks on their Facebook page.  The game’s director Naoki Yoshida, Yoshi-P to players, responded the next day with the remarks that he had heard about the uproar here in the States and said flat out that the sound director had not copied it.

My take on it?: It’s utter bullshit. It might have sounded similar, however it also wasn’t copying the song in question and it sounded similar to every other song in that genre of music. Another thing that I’ll point out and I’ve done so before, is that Plagiarism is the basis for all artistic activities. No one reinvents the wheel unless they are beyond stupid, and using musical techniques that others have used before isn’t stealing from them. It’s a technique not an IP that you can copyright. Powerman 5000 has no right to even bitch about this, let alone even pursue legal action (which they’d lose).

That all being said I actually enjoyed the hell out of the boss fight in question, it’s quite fun and the music is enjoyable, but I’m not going to go downloading Powerman 5000 because it’s in the same genre, I’ve never heard about them prior to this.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!