Thats a good point, still I cant help to think that one is responsible for their actions, I personally dont think I have an addiction, but if I do and I will be responsible for my actions and ultimate my fault for feeding the addiction. But you are correct as you mentioned the targeted market, its people who have addiction to this kind of stuff , people who have the money to spare or kids who dont know any better. Which reminds me not to long ago my little brother in law (11-12 years old respectively) where asking me how to buy the currency for games like Free fire or Minecraft , they had some money to spare and they where very insisting about it, at the end of the day I convinced them to get some waterguns instead, but it was clear that if they had the chance they would spend the money on microtransactions for the games simply because they could.
It's not quite as black and white as saying "It's the customer's fault for buying them". They are designed intentionally to be manipulative and use the same psychological techniques that Casino's, slot machines and even shady business schemes like pyramids.
You don't have an issue with spending money on these things and actually, neither do I and thats great... for us, but we are NOT the people that they are after. Its children, people with gambling problems, compulsive spending habbits, troubles with addiction or otherwise don't know any better and/or can't help themselves.
Jim Sterling posted an interesting video about this if you want to take a look.
Ok, I got started playing AC 3 tonight for the first time. THIS GAME IS AWESOME! I may have hated the first one initially, but this one is amazing. I’m not far into it yet. I’m on the ship to Boston, about to look into a possible mutiny. Don’t spoil it for me. I didn’t go too far because I haven’t been sleeping lately, so my brain can’t process a lot of new information at the moment. If I can’t get one good nights sleep, I’ll be going nuts playing this game. I’m so glad I got it on my Switch.
Awesome to hear that a third Silent Hill movie is officially in the works! Anyone else excited? https://thedeadbeatcritics.com/2020/02/02/new-silent-hill-movie-in-development-original-director-returning/
Please cast your vote in the poll above for this month's Member of the Month. The winner will receive 500 Points which can be used to Bid for Rewards like giftcards, cash, video games, and gaming consoles.
Member of the Month is generally awarded to the individual who had the biggest impact on the VGR Forum. This is generally in the form of contributing the most amount of posts in terms of quantity and/or quality, but can extend to referrals/promotion and other efforts to benefit the community.
Voting closes February 5th at 10pm EST.
Source: https://alyxxgameroom.blogspot.com/2018/08/nes-game-re-review-motherearthbound-zero.html
GAME: Mother (Earthbound Beginnings on WiiU)
RELEASED: 07/27/1989
DEVELOPER: Ape
PUBLISHER: Nintendo
AVAILABLE ON: Famicom, NES (unofficial release), GBA, WiiU
SPOILER ALERT! This review will spoil the story of Mother. If you haven't played the game yet, I strongly urge you to do so! If spoilers do not bother you, please go on.
Recently I was attacked by a nasty cold and have been out for a few days. I took the opportunity to revisit a game that's been on my mind for well over a few years now. Back in 2013, I reviewed this game on my blog without having really finished it. But already then it left a pretty lasting impression on me and it's always been sitting in my backlog since then, always having been that game that I knew I had to finish some day. And it seems that day has come as I have finally completed Mother. Granted, I have only completed Earthbound Zero Easy, a romhack of the fan translation which decreases encounter rates, increases XP gained and overall makes the game more managable so my review will more reflect this version of the game than the original, just so it's said. But I will still be keeping the original game in mind. So here's my full review of Mother after 4 years of trying to get back into it.
This game knows how to ask the important questions!
Mother tells the story of three characters who's fates intertwine as their world falls victim to an alien invasion. Set in a somewhat off beat 1980's America, you start out in the town of Podunk when young boy Ninten is awoken by a loud noise. He runs to his sister's room to find her doll posessed, moving on its own, and after fighting it, the doll stops moving. But not without revealing something incredible, inside it is a music box that plays a little melody, which Ninten remembers. Unknown to Ninten, this melody is part of a puzzle he has to solve in order to stop the invasion. After finding the key to the house's locked basement on his dog, he discovers a diary from his great grandfather, George, revealing that Ninten posesses special psychic powers.
At some point on his journey, he ends up in a faraway land called Magicant, where in a castle Queen Mary resides. She mournfully tells Ninten that she cannot remember anything. She can vaguely remember a song but seems to have forgotten this as well, and beckons Ninten to find all eight pieces of this song which seem to have been hidden around the world. Together with Lloyd, a nerd with a knack for science and Ana, a seemingly fragile girl with extraordinary psychic powers.
The story of Mother is driven by the eight melodies and your search for them. Because as it turns out, these hold a significance beyond what you can imagine as they are the weapon you need to defeat the leader of the alien invaders, Giegue, who as it turns out, was once the adopted child of George and Maria and the melody is the lullaby she would sing to him. Reminded by the love of his surrogate mother, Giegue is forced to leave the planet and let go the people he has abducted.
To me, the story of Mother is really what got me coming back to it. It's one of the games that somehow creates an entirely unique narrative and uses the game mechanics to tell the story in a way that gives it a unique feel I've never seen in other games. And I find the way you defeat the final boss incredibly ingenious. Since you play as children, despite your powers, there is no way you can defeat a foe that is so infinitely more powerful than you can ever imagine. The only weapon you have is love, and you have to intentionally not attack him to beat him which I find amazing. It's easy to see why this game has been an inspiration to so many modern game makers such as Toby Fox who made the amazing Undertale, since this too kind of took the RPG genre and did something new and interesting with it, even if it also fell victim to some of its more outdated perks. So let's get on to discussing the gameplay shall we?
Mother, despite its cute first impression, has many dark heartfelt moments.
Gameplay-wise, Mother honestly plays like a traditional RPG for the most part. You level up through battling enemies in turn-based combat, and each of your characters have different stats and different talents which you need to get accustomed to in order to fully be efficient in battles. Ninten uses mostly melee weapons such as bats and has mostly defensive PSI. Ana has a lot of offensive PSI, but a low health pool and cannot use most weapons other than frying pans (bit of stereotyping there). Lloyd doesn't deal a lot of physical damage and can mostly use guns and items such as bottle rockets, bombs, plasma beams and flamethrowers, but can dish out a lot of damage with those items.
Much of Mother requires you to utilize the game's powerups correctly for these characters. Getting the right items can be crucial to easing the game's harsh difficulty, and there is a lot of grinding involved to make sure your characters are strong enough to tackle the road ahead. Granted I was playing the EB0 Easy hack, which cuts down on the difficulty a great deal and allowed me to appreciate the game more so I highly recommend playing this ROM if you can get it, but be prepared to deal with a lot of the typical tropes of early RPG's. This game definitely benefits from using a walkthrough so don't feel bad if you have to pay Starmen.net a visit. I used their walkthrough for EB0 for my playthrough and do not regret it as the tips and strategies in it helped a lot with easing the game for me. Granted you can play the game however you want to but the walkthrough saves a lot of time and grief from wandering around aimlessly.
It's very hard to recommend Mother on its gameplay, because it is sadly very outdated and not always in the best way. It requires a lot of patience, and requires that you find that drive to keep playing even when it feels tiring. To me that drive was the Eight Melodies. As stated in my original review, when listening to the eight melodies I would feel inspired to play the game, to see it through. And I felt that the eight melodies I picked up were valuable treasures that were almost lost in the world, it drove me to finish the game and bring peace to the world. The game feels bigger than the world you see, it feels like you're on an epic quest to save the world from a threat you at first cannot even understand. And your enjoyment of the game will definitely depend on how engaged in the world you become.
Well... fuck.
Graphically, Mother isn't impressive. But it definitely has a style. Heavily influenced by the Peanuts comic strip, it uses a style that feels really easy to like. It's bright, colourful and uses the NES palette to greatly enhance each area's look and feel. From the green fields of Podunk and Merrysville, to the snowy plains of Snowman and the cold industrial designs of the factories and laboratories, the world of Mother looks as varied and diverse as you would imagine it to look. The only thing I don't really like the look of is the battle screen. It's mostly just a black screen with enemy sprites on it, which granted are really detailed and great to look at, but having a background would probably help a lot here in my opinion.
Musically... this game has the best soundtrack of the entire NES library in my opinion. From the get-go, Mother bombards you with some of the most emotional and some of the most catchy music you may ever hear from an 8 bit system. From the mellow and soothing opening theme, to the driving beats of Pollyanna and Bein' Friends, to the dark disturbing industrial moods of factories and the sheer emotional power of the Eight Melodies, Mother's soundtrack is unforgetable. The soundtrack is varied too. There's everything from rock'n'roll tunes, to ballads, to menacing industrial atmospheric music. It feels like it never gets boring and perfectly fits every area you go to.
Every time I hear the Eight Melodies, I cannot help crying, because the melodies feel like they represent pure love. The kind of love you've felt from your mother. It feels like a genuine lullaby. And it soothes me in a way few things can. When I am angry at my friends, when I feel down and depressed, the Eight Melodies can soothe me like nothing else I know. It's become one of my favourite tunes in all of gaming really for this reason and it's why I can truly believe it can make even an alien menace like Giegue break down in tears and leave. In its simplicity, in its eight little melodies, it holds immense power and hits harder than anything I've ever heard. It was one of the things that truly stuck out to me about the game and the reason I've kept playing through it.
Thank you for your nice song indeed ❤️
Mother is flawed. Incredibly flawed. Even with a guide, the game is brutally difficult and at times is confusingly vague. It can be an infuriating game without knowing the right strategies and what the different items do. And yet, with its flaws, it holds one of the best stories of its generation, one of the best soundtracks, one of the most important messages and some of the most memorable worlds ever in a video game. It's an experience I will never forget, one I will keep with me until I die. Those moments when I sat there, singing along to Ninten, Ana and Lloyd as their song brought Giegue to tears, brought me to tears as well. The fact an 8bit game could make me feel so many emotions to me is amazing and if you're at all a fan of RPG's, or even better, Earthbound, you definitely need to play this game some day.
I guess it's time to finally tackle Earthbound next. A game which has eluded me for a long time and I swore I would finish Mother before playing it. Now I have no excuse not to.
https://www.ign.com/articles/silent-hill-games-sequels-konami-pt-kojima-2020-leak
Two new Silent Hill games are in the works, according to a new report from a reliable leaker, via Eurogamer.
Twitter user Aesthetic Gamer was the first to drop the new report. Aesthetic Gamer is known for reliably leaking previous Capcom titles (although Silent Hill is developed and published by Konami), and divulged some details about the supposed two new Silent Hill games. According to Aesthetic Gamer, one game will be a “soft” reboot of the franchise while the other will be an episodic experience similar to Telltale games or Until Dawn.
“In other news while I'm dropping this stuff, and I think I can talk about this, I'll mention there is a couple new Silent Hill games in the works,” Aesthetic Gamer said. “Konami about two years ago reached out to various developers to pitch ideas for two Silent Hill games, one a soft-reboot of the franchise, the other an episodic TellTale/Until Dawn-style game to go alongside the reboot. I don't know anything more than that though, but I sure do hope Konami's given it the appropriate budget and found the right developer to make those games succeed.”
Aesthetic Gamer closed out their comments by saying that they don’t know anything more about the alleged Silent Hill games, just that they exist. They also said that they guess one or more of the games may be revealed this year.
One leaker’s information wouldn’t be that much to go on, but other signs do point to developments that bolster the case for a new Silent Hill game or two existing. Silent Hill 2 art director Masahiro Ito said that he was working on “a title as a core member. I hope the title won’t be canceled.”
Though Ito never confirmed as much, fans speculated that Ito’s “I hope the title won’t be canceled” comment could be a reference to Hideo Kojima’s infamously canceled Silent Hills game, which was preceded by the even more infamous P.T. (“Playable Teaser”) demo that spooked horror game fans back in 2014. For what it’s worth, Konami has also been spotted refiling Silent Hill trademarks that were about to lapse. Horror media site Rely on Horror also said that its own independent source also said a new Silent Hill game was in development.
And speaking of Kojima, the developer has seemingly waffled back and forth on whether or not he’d pursue a horror game after the cancelation of Silent Hills. Kojima posted a picture of his workspace, saying he was working on the concept for his next game. That said, don’t count on Kojima to work with Konami after their very public breakup following the release of Metal Gear Solid 5. He also seems to have his hands full with plans to develop smaller games, manga, and anime.
Konami told PCGamesN that the company is "considering ways to provide the next title," and IGN has confirmed with a Konami spokesperson further clarifying that "Konami is continually evaluating our entire IP portfolio for future development consideration."
They eat people, animals and other infected and whatever else they can find until they die. When they do the fungus releases spores which spread the infection.
The last game that I played was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The game has quite a few bugs and the developers haven't been too communicative (even though they said they would be when the game launches), but, it has been a lot of fun. Some of the maps are really fun to mess around in, especially Shipment which is just full of chaos and a great map to play on.
No Man's Sky
Decided to give it a try, since apparently it's a good game now. 😂 Because I'm a glutton for punishment and I adore roguelikes, I chose to go directly to permadeath mode.
I got killed twice in the first 10 minutes by the hazardous environment. Third time was the charm, though, and I'm finally throwing together a shelter and some other things that should help keep me alive. Early game is Hell, apparently. Especially if you're like me and you don't know what you're doing.
Normally I'd play on a lower difficulty first and get acquainted with how the game plays, but the roguelike option was just too much for me to pass up. I had to do that first, or I'd never forgive myself. 😂
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