Feminists everywhere love the realism of this art.
We all know that the body positivity movement is constantly under attack. Sexist and hateful bigots everywhere say it’s bad. We know this simply isn’t true. Women are healthy at every size. It takes a strong and bold woman to prove to the haters that their hate is all lies.
You’ve seen many fat acceptance renditions of all your favorite comic book heroes, video game characters, and Disney princesses. Re-drawings like those are reshaping the very paradigm of sex. A new culture is emerging and proving to everyone that women are beautiful. However, there have been certain issues with some more recent characters. We just don’t have enough of the perfect feminist role models in media. When we do, the characters are still very problematic. A whole army of people trolled the tolerant studio Bioware because their beautiful female protagonist wasn’t sexy enough for them.
We just don’t have enough of the perfect feminist role models in media.
Now we have the default star of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Kassandra. Although she is both very strong and smart, her appearance in the game needs to be unpacked. She has really big muscles for woman, and that’s a completely unrealistic standard. In order to get that big and muscular, she would have to go the the gym twice per day to look that good. But because it’s in Ancient Rome, they didn’t have gyms back then. So there’s nothing that can be done about that. She would also need to drink bulking powder and that didn’t exist back then either.
Fret not. We went to tumblr and found the perfect recreation of this iconic new character. Jessica Goldberg from @goldenbergerarts on the site had all the skill needed to show people what Assassins Creed needed. In true response for tolerance and peace of the women’s mind, this version was created. Now THIS is what feminine beauty is supposed to look like! Share this post everywhere. The manbabies on the far right hate it when people draw accurate representations of the better sex. You can already taste the toxic male tears.
Thankfully, this post was SATIRE in case you weren’t tipped off by “Ancient Rome”.
God of War, Yakuza 6 and some other less important stuff.
It’s been a long time coming but the worst part of the pre-E3 drought is here. Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. It was a great release week for PS4 so it can’t be the worst. The worst is when there are no good releases and news is as dry as last week. Either way this week sucked pretty bad too. But as always I did my best to bring some glorious, or at least interesting, news for my fellow Lucky Gamers:
1. To play alone or not to play alone?
I would never have thought that the day would come where I would be questioning how much longer single player games have left. Sure on one hand we have the incredible single player adventures like God of War or Yakuza. But on the other, we have the recent rumor that this years Call of Duty may arrive with no single player campaign. That is crazy. Absolutely unexpected. The rumor is this years Call of Duty ran out of development time to perfect the single player campaign and it was scrapped. Of course, this could all be hype train boarding because all parties involved have declined to comment. If Call of Duty goes campaign free, it may set the example that single player is dead. At least for triple A titles. Is that something we are ready for? My answer: No.
2. The Anthem Story.
Mass Effect: Andromeda’s story was so poorly received that EA and Bioware haven’t been able to shake the nightmares. Now on the rumors of an industry shaking decision, Bioware has go on record to say that they are focusing heavily on the story for the upcoming Anthem. Anthem was shown off last year and immediately touted as a Destiny clone. In a world dominated by Battle Royale it may have become apparent that a Destiny clone might not be enough. Anthem was set to launch this year but was recently delayed to 2019. Let’s just hope they don’t butcher the story before launch because “there wasn’t enough time”.
3. Battle Royale!?
Let’s sum up the interesting Battle Royale news category real briefly this week. First off congratulations to Epic for Fortnite mobile bringing in over $25 million in its first month. That’s a lot of money. Like a lot of money. So much so that it brings us to point two. Dice is currently prototyping a Battle Royale mode for Battlefield V. Reports say that they are testing mechanics and gameplay styles in engine but it most likely will not be ready for launch. Rumors also claim Treyarch is doing the same for Black Ops 4. And while the big guys are playing catch up the other little big name on the scene is innovating to compete. PUBG just added a new underground cave system to the map. The cave had various exit ways and an entire underground system of its own.
4. Switch delay Switch Hooray!
Bad news out the way first. Dark Souls Remastered for Switch has been delayed. The Dark Souls amiibo has also been delayed and Bandai Namco did not provide any clear reason. The delay only effects the Switch version with the remaster still releasing for all other platforms on May 25th. Good news, NBA Playgrounds 2 will be launching this summer. Season mode, over 200 players, and a championship online mode are just a few of the new improvements to the game. And random over speculation of possible great news, new Wave Racer incoming. I’m talking about the game series, not the musician. In a brief interview at BAFTA, series producer Takahashi said it may be one of the games they are working on bringing back.
5. One long awaited, one hardly expected.
This console generation has seen the long over due return of traditional horror games. Great experiences like Resident Evil 7 and Outlast have given the genre new life. Canceled projects like Silent Hills have shown us how crazy things can really get. Now Agony, a kickstarter horror game, will be released on May 29th on PS4, Xbox One, and PC will be aiming to further darken your underwear. The other genre this console generation has has a massive impact on is Open World. With damn near every game exploring the idea of open world for better or worse. Still not enough and so we have the announcement of Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass. Not much was shown about the game besides the announcement trailer but I’m sure we’ll see more at E3.
6. It’s never too late for training.
If you’ve ever thought to yourself after playing a game for a whole year, “man this game could really use a training or practice mode”, don’t give up. That’s what I’m guessing happened over at Ubisoft. Some noob kept getting wrecked in For Honor and finally someone was like “Fine Steve! We’ll put a training mode in so you can ‘git good’ and stop crying”. So now a whole year later, For Honor will have a training mode. Dreams do come true. And if that was enough class in a game how about Disgaea 1 making a comeback on Nintendo Switch and PS4. No exact date was given yet but it will be coming sometime this year with collector’s editions available for preorder now.
7. Classic gaming in a possible modern classic?
That was an awful title mechanic. Either way stick with me and see where it goes. First, Kingdom Hearts 3 finally gave us a little more information about itself. The game will feature mini games inspired by classic LCD gaming from days of old. Days of old being a quick reference to 1980’s games and old Mickey Mouse animated shorts. Supposedly still slated to release this year it won’t be much longer before you can have Sora reliving our gaming past on his current gaming tech. I really don’t expect this game to still be coming out this year but boy would that be a pleasant surprise.
Week 9, the drought continues. There hasn’t been any incredible news. E3 approaches ever so slowly but the rate of speculation continues. So here I am making sure to find all the coolest announcements possible. For you, for me, for us, here are the reasons you should feel like a Lucky Gamer this week:
1. Let’s Start Releasing.
We are going to be all over the place with this, so get your pen and pad buddy. Ready? Alright here we go. First off, PSVR is getting a cute little mouse adventure called Moss. The game which actually plays from a third person perspective is coming to the system on February 27th, 2018. Next, the blue bomber is letting us relive some of his memories again in the for of Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 and 2. This new classic remake is coming to Nintendo Switch on May 22nd, 2018 (my birthday!). The wildly rumored Burnout Paradise Remaster was officially announced and given a release date. Expect to race through exploding car crashes on March 16th for PS4 and Xbox One. And just for good measure we’ll throw in a release time frame. The long awaited game from Alan Wake developer Remedy Entertainment, codenamed P7, is slated for 2019.
2. And now the Death Stranding announcement that’s been baking.
As the slow drips continue to increase, we are lucky enough to receive more information about Death Stranding. Kojima and team have been very tight lipped about the project so any news is cause for excitement. This is particular though I’m pretty excited about. Voice actor Troy Baker and writer and actress Emily O’Brien have joined the cast. This Hollywood level cast continues to flex its muscle by adding a top tier voice actor and an elite actress with writing credentials. This piece of news helps us in absolutely no way at all with the mystery, but at least we know we are in good hands. No if only we get you know, David Hayter, maybe?
3. Paladins and Metal Gear need help surviving !
Released to absolutely no expecting audience, Metal Gear Survive finds its first headlines across the internet in a negative light. The first major piece of DLC comes in the form of paying an additional $10 for an extra in game save slot. Yea, you read that right. $10 to be able to have an extra save slot. It’s outrageous and few people were interested in this game to begin with. I can undeniably confirm that everyone at Konami has lost their damn minds. On the other hand, developers working on Paladins are working tirelessly to remove the controversial loot boxes. Chris Arson from Hi Rez Studios, the developers of Paladins, openly acknowledged how upset they have made loyal fans. He says the peoples voices have been heard and they will be shifting focus on getting rid of the Cards Unbound update. The update allowed players to purchase gear and weapons which gave an advantage over players who made no purchases.
4. Sony Launches “My Playstation”.
Anyone familiar with the convenience of using the Playstation app will tell you it started off terrible but blossomed very well. That may not be the case this time around. Sony just announced a browser based version of the Playstation Network compatible with almost any up to date browser. Similar to the app, this new site will allow users to search for friends, send and respond to messages and friend request, edit their profile, and many other core functions of the Playstation Network. Still no mention of PSN ID changes anytime soon, I know that’s important to some people. I, however, remain ever so content with my PSN ID: SooperVega. Come get this work. Kidding, I’m actually really bad at video games.
5. Watson, come join us at the gaming table.
Take a step into the next level of gaming, where partnerships between gaming companies and computer technology companies are growing at an amazing rate. First we saw Oculus purchased by Facebook, Apple buying AR companies, and now Unity partnering with IBM. This new team up will be working to bring the powerful Watson AI to video games. The announcement of the “IBM Watson Unity SDK” is already live in the Unity asset store and will allow developers to integrate the cloud based AI in their games. The hope is that this combined set of tools will unlock a brand new potential in the world of AR and VR, with obvious benefits for standard games as well. Who knows, is the world ready for such powerful AI? Does this mean NPC’s will now always remember that one time I hit them pretty hard while testing my new weapons? Find out on the next episode of – Sorry I’ve been watching Dragon Ball Super.
6. Barbie goes tomb raiding.
As Tomb Raider continues to become the first video game franchise to truly succeed in crossing mediums, we get to see another cool partnership. Mattel has announced that a Tomb Raider edition Barbie will be available for $29.99. The new collectible figure is based on and model after actress Alicia Vikander’s upcoming portrayal of the gaming icon. Rebooting Tomb Raider has ended up being an all around success so far, let’s see how the film does. The figure also comes with all the necessary tomb raiding tools like a map, axe, journal, and certificate of authenticity. That last tool is critical, that’s what gets the bad stuff to happen so you can escape it.
7. Net Neutrality Scheduled to officially end in April.
Sorry to take this moment to get political for a moment but I think all gamers can agree this is important. Net neutrality is scheduled to officially go bye bye on April 23rd. For those who don’t understand what Net Neutrality is, here’s a quick summary. Net Neutrality allows the government to treat internet as a base utility, like gas or electric. This prevents private companies from being able to out do smaller companies by offering more money to block other out. Example: a small gaming website like ours vs a major conglomerate like IGN; they have a larger budget than us, so if a major internet provider said, pay more to allow your visitors more bandwidth on your site, they would immediately win that war. (This is not a real situation yet, although it is plausible, sorry IGN just keeping it real, love you) Don’t take my word for it, go do your own research. Involve yourself and take action, let’s be the changes we want to see in the world.
This isn’t the multiplayer game you’ve been looking for.
I really cannot restate enough how disappointing Star Wars Battlefront II was to me. I knew based on all of the feedback from the beta and the pre-release reviews that it wasn’t going to be great. But I specifically wanted to give DICE and/or EA the benefit of the doubt and see if it really was just as bad as everyone said it was. So I played it. And… it was worse than I even imagined.
Many people would come to the website and think we are trying to be edgy with the score we gave to this game. Not quite. While the language I personally used was lost bashing, it was a very inspired brand of bashing to say the least. After hearing so many negative comments and so many negative reviews (AKA 6/10s, the mainstream games journalism equivalent of “bad”), I went in with rather low expectations, and not even those were met.
I stand strong in everything I said and don’t think I was being harsh. To shortly reiterate the review, I found that story was particularly abysmal in its stupidity. The audio was a snorefest of generic music with lazer noises and bad soundalikes. The gameplay really wasn’t all that fun with its needlessly confusing starcard system. And then the loot box fiasco was just the icing on the cake. Fun fact, Ubisoft recentaly globally rolled back all their scheduled 2018 releases and I have a slight suspicion that they intended to implement loot boxes but are now backpedalling. I have no proof of this, just merely a speculation.
So, you may be asking yourself, what’s the point of this article? Are you just here to kick SWBF2 while it’s down? Well, no. This is because it’s not “down” at all since it appears to somehow still be a successful release. But as much as there were many great games this year, there were also 3 major titles that were massive disappointments.
Sonic Forces came out recently and I harped on that being only good for the soundtrack. But would I play that game over playing SWBF2? Yes, this buggy, poorly slapped together mess of a game is still a better and far more entertaining experience, made doubly so because it’s short. And well, that soundtrack, hot damn.
Mass Effect Andromeda was a huge letdown across the board thanks to janky animations, clunky combat, and god awful scripting. But it’s still Mass Effect and as much as I like to joke that SWBF2 was Star Wars game with mass Effect assets, one thing still stands. Andromeda does have substance. By now, Andromeda should also be fairly patched (I hope) to a point where all the multitudes of bugs and glitches have been fixed.
What else was a letdown? Agents of Mayhem, Volitions spiritual successor to Saints Row, was quite mess. It was buggy just like Andromeda, but only half as much. The way the script and character design was made, I genuinely have no idea what audience they had in mind when they made this game, it’s all over the place in tone and script. But after finishing the campaign, I still had stuff to do, and time permitting, I would have done it because even with all the repetition, it was at least playable. A weird design, but playable.
And that’s just 3 examples. I’m not saying that Star Wars Battlefront 2 is the worst game of the year, the game runs ok, the graphics are good, and at its core there’s potential for improvement. This, on the otherhand, is a heavy letdown because it didn’t have good press before it came out, and was even worse for wear on release date. But to all the fans who are angry at the bad reviews, you ire is misdirected. Don’t get mad at the reviewers for giving your bad game a bad review. Refocus your attention on EA and ask why, oh why, did they make the decisions they made for the game. You deserve more and you should be asking for more.
People frequently complain when the ending of a game ruins a series. Especially if said series is a ‘choose your own adventure’ type of experience. Why should I bother at all if the ending is the same? Sure. Why bother eating an apple, it eventually will become a core. Don’t eat that ice cream, it ends up being an empty bowl. What happens throughout the course of a game is far more likely affect than that silly little ending you encounter. [Minor spoilers for Mass Effect and Life is Strange: Before the Storm – Episode 2]
In case you missed it, there’s a new movie coming out from big time director Luc Besson, famous writer/producer/director for countless blockbuster films like The Fifth Element, The Transporter Series (the good ones), Leon: The Professional, Lucy, and Taken. This new feature’s full title is Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. It’s shaping up to be one of the biggest sci-fi films of the year, especially in a year and a half that’s chock-full of the genre. You now have stuff like Ghost in the Shell, Westworld, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars and the upcoming Blade Runner 2049. But don’t let me tell you about it, have a look at the trailer above.
See that? Listen up Bioware, though this film may not even be out yet, the trailers alone already have more interesting plot developments and characters than all of Mass Effect: Andromeda. A 20-60 hour title. Even the small snippets of soundtrack from the trailer are better than the mess of an original score Andromeda had. EA Games’ faith in the series after launch is so low that it diverted the entire staff of the game off to other projects and have all but acknowledged the failings of the new entry. Even the multiplayer, usually a big holdout for some games, seems to be in its own death throes.
Indeed readers, if you are one of the many disenfranchised souls who had their hopes and dreams crushed with the lackluster-at-best Andromeda sequel to the Mass Effect trilogy, here is where you can lay your new aspirations. Valerian, despite sharing it’s name with an herb that promotes sleep, is a very ambitious and very stunning looking glimmer of hope coming to a theater near you. Launching on July 21st, this film is showing nearly Avatar or even Star Wars levels up hype and excitement. This is big for a new IP Not only that, but the visuals and costume design are so on-point, you’d be forgiven if you’d think that this film is actually a film version of a Mass Effect game. The action shots, the color palette, the plot; everything you need to make a perfect new space adventure project are her. This film is laying the foundation of what could possibly be a glorious new series, and if not a new series, at least a great new original movie.
And speaking of the costume design, is it a coincidence that the armor and outfits in Valerian seem very similar to Mass Effect? Is it possible that there was maybe even some inspiration from the game series? This new film may be an adaptation of an old graphic novel, but apparently Besson had considered making Valerian as early as when he was shooting the Fifth Element back in 1997. The news of the ambitious title tackling the title didn’t come until 2012. The Mass Effect trilogy’s release dates were in 2007, 2010, and 2012. Regardless of who inspired who and what inspired what, Valerian is showing a whole lot of promise and its bringing it’s whole universe along with it.
Fans of the original Mass Effect Trilogy enjoyed an exciting sci-fi romp filled with amazing characters, lore, action, and excitement. It’s a shame Andromeda was not able to hold up to the impossibly high bar that was set. It’s even worse that Andromeda was actually pretty bad for some people. But if you want to see a rich universe full of interesting aliens, cosmic conflicts, and explosive space epics, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is ready to deliver!
UPDATE 7/22
Saw the film. Everything I said above was accurate. Film was only slightly above average. It had great special effects and costumes, but dialog and action sequences were rather wooden. But to to delve further into the analogies, the protagonists Valerian and Laureline were like Renegade MaleShepard and Paragon FemShep existing together at the same time. But, instead of being brother and sister like Andromeda, they’re actually bickering partners, both in the space police and in the bedroom. Their lines were pretty bland for most of the film, yet somehow still more compelling than Scott and Sara Ryder, main characters who are so utterly forgettable I had to google what their names were while writing this blurb. So yeah! Go see this film if you want to see a considerably better high fantasy experience. One that is guaranteed to give you two hours and seventeen minutes more enjoyment than you will if you play Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Mass Effect: Andromeda is a third person shooter with RPG elements, developed by BioWare and published by EA Games. The fourth in the series, Andromeda sought to avoid the troublesome ending of third game by setting it in an entirely new galaxy. Core gameplay revolves around making planets habitable for life while occasionally dealing with a new, galaxy-wide menace. This new game came out a whopping 5 years after the last entry, and did it do a good job?
GRAPHICS: 0/2
No, it didn’t. You would think that for a game hyping up a 4K display optimization might mean some pretty mind blowing graphics, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. You may have seen some of the memes online about the trouble with the facial animations, and they are truly a disaster. Occasionally, some of the textures look decent at best, but there wasn’t a single moment in my time with the game where anything blew my mind. At no point did I have to pause and look at the scenery because on top of being not that technically impressive, a lot of the designs for the colonies and locations you spend your time at define the term “bland”.
STORY: 2/2
Possibly the only thing that really keeps the game going is it’s attention to the plot. Many characters can be talked to, even if they don’t have a quest to give you, making it feel like you’re doing more than just running errands for people who aren’t doing anything (though that does still happen). A lot of the plot threads lead to some very interesting conclusions and for the most part, if you give yourself the time to get to know your ship crew, you may be able to like about half of them. Yes, it is true that it has a slew of characters who are neither compelling or interesting, but it’s outweighed by the sheer scale of people you can meet in your travels. Additionally, and this is becoming common in today’s jumbo-sized games, a majority of the side quests yield more interesting stories than the main campaign offers.
AUDIO: 1/2
The original score for this game is largely forgettable and sometimes irritating. There’s this sort of screechy tone that finds its way into some of the more ambient tracks in the game while you are on the ship or a hub location. But that said, the weapons all sound unique enough to make them not only feel diverse, but also very powerful. Also, something should be said of the galaxy map. The traveling noise you get when you select a planet and hear a loud, bass heavy roar as your fly across the stars never gets old. If they had made exploring the galaxy more compelling, I’d be doing it all the time.
GAMEPLAY: 0/2
It’s popular now for games to allow the player to “play it your way” and that’s fine. But when you design a game to do so, you have to make sure all the elements work. Andromeda doesn’t quite grasp this, as it seems combat and inventory have been largely downgraded back to the system from the first Mass Effect game, which is mistakes 1-10 of this shipwreck. If you want to play the game like other titles and stick to cover shooting, the spotty auto-cover system is unsatisfying at best and a waste of time at its worst. Stealth is sometimes offered for certain enemy types but feels completely impossible to actually execute. For the most part you have to stick to a frenetic run and gun approach, and that would be fine if that too wasn’t also full of issues, primarily including input lag. It’s hard to make a game with jump jets boring, but the lack of interesting locations and overuse of the equally boring nomad ATV really turn this game into a snooze fest.
FUN: 1/2
As I got further and further into the game, I got more and more frustrated. You can start doing quests on one planet and go to another, but the sheer amount of quests that have you go from location to location and the confusing layout of the journal eventually wear down on you. Yet I kept coming back to this game and did roughly 90% of everything on offer, and that’s only because it is still a Mass Effect game. It’s just unfortunate that many elements stand in the way of your enjoyment. Enemy #1 of your enjoyment is the extremely numerous amount of bugs and glitches that hamper your immersion. Bethesda gets a bad rap for having bugs you can encounter roughly every hour after launch, but with Andromeda, it was almost as if they were trying to be competitive for “buggiest game” with glitches galore, practically every TEN MINUTES.
This game feels unfinished and rushed out the door. From a design standpoint, Mass Effect: Andromeda has regressed back to Mass Effect 1 with garbage combat, inventory, and quest tracking. It’s only the story and how much you can tolerate the amount of filler in between doing interesting things that will keep you playing this title. That’s a real shame, as I was looking forward to this, and to say that this game is a critical failure is the biggest understatement in gaming for 2017 so far. Galaxy map traveling was on point though, can we just have an exploration only game? I’d play that.
When we first started out as a team, this was the initial few troll videos I made.
Zelda: BOTW – F1RST 1MPR3SSI0NS!!! with Chet
Some sick gameplay footage and reactions to gamings newest and greatest sensation, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, now out of Nintendo Switch and Nintendo WiiU.
Horizon Zero Dawn – F1RST 1MPR3SSI0NS!!! with Chet
See some epic gameplay footage for Horizon Zero Dawn with Chet, who is a real hardcore gamer.
Mass Effect Andromeda Patch – F1RST IMPR3SSI0NS with Chet
Mass Effect Andromeda was recently patched and I finally got a chance to play it! It’s so good, I don’t know why everyone hates on it.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is bringing my attention to an issue. Y’see, some games like to occasionally bind the same button to more than one function. That’s okay, that’s doable. But sometimes, one button has so many uses that it becomes a nuisance. Here’s a basic look at all of the functions that Witcher III attaches to the “A” button on Xbox One:
-Sprint
-Interact with Character
-Interact with Object
-Select Menu Option
-Dodge Roll
-Horse Jog
-Horse Sprint
It’s nowhere near exhaustive, and many of these interactions are clearly contextual as you can see. The problem is that sometimes you may intend to use the button for one situation and accidentally end up with the other. For instance, in the aforementioned game, let’s say you stand next to a character you want to talk to. But there’s also a candle next to them. You go to say “hello” but you light the candle instead. No big, now you turn the camera to the left to face them. Oops, you are looting that box behind them, who put that there? Okay, now that the box is looted you can turn back to them to talk, for real this time. Only you don’t because you just relit the candle again instead. Argh!
