It isn't exactly unknown that gamers will cry about anything given the opportunity whether it's for a legitimate reason or a stupid one; 10 minutes of Mass Effect 3 apparently ruined 200+ hours of fun, Devil May Cry being handed to developers who are questionable with gameplay, Mega Man is apparently dead because he hasn't had a new game in a whole two years. It appears that another thing to cry about has popped up – Dark Souls: Prepare to Die for the PC uses Games for Windows Live (GFWL, for short) instead of using Steamworks. I really wouldn't write up a blog about this generally, but the fact that Dark Souls was never going to happen for PC originally until gamers asked for it and then they subsequently complain that the PC version they're getting isn't good enough, to the point where they're petitioning to change the game they petitioned to get in the first place, borderline infuriates me. First, let me pull a quote from the petition page I just linked you to;

After anxiously awaiting a PC release for this fantastic game it feels like a real slap in the face hearing Dark Souls will use Games for Windows Live.

There's a saying called “don't look a gift horse in the mouth”, and as far as I'm concerned this falls right in that category. I feel like the only real slap in the face occurring here is from the fans who can't simply be happy that Dark Souls is even getting a PC version at all. This isn't like Namco Bandai threw out a mediocre port of Dark Souls on launch day with the 360 and PS3 version just to net a few more cheap sales. The PC port of Dark Souls came as a result of a strong fan push and a rare response from a publisher. Dark Souls PC happened for the fans, and those same fans seem to be very quickly squashing that good will.



I'm not the biggest fan of Games for Windows Live, I would probably prefer Steamworks over it as well. However, I've personally never experienced issues with GFWL and know others who've likewise never had problems with the service at all, so in an odd way I feel obligated to at least defend the service before people decide to (with arguably good reason) shit on it. Along with that, I at least get a decent chance to at least try to take a different stance from others and provide a debate.

People need to step back and think about a few things when considering reasons why Games for Windows Live is being used for Dark Souls on the PC. First, Namco Bandai & FromSoftware simply don't put out many PC games what so ever, Wikipedia lists only two PC titles from Namco Bandai since 2006. Given their lack of presence in the PC market in general I'm willing to give them at least some sort of leeway regarding choosing GFWL over Steam (because hey, people make mistakes). Also, I'm going to Namco Bandai more so than FromSoftware in this blog since I find it very likely that Namco Bandai worked more on this port than FromSoftware did given that the later had been working on Armored Core V since Dark Souls was released.

Secondly, and more importantly, I would imagine that GFWL's online infrastructure isn't too dissimilar from what Xbox Live uses on the 360. Dark Souls was released on the Xbox 360, thus it's probably a safe thing to assume that the reason GFWL was chosen was because a lot of the netcode from the Xbox 360 version of the game could be used for the PC version. Given the already mentioned lack of PC game experience for either the publisher or developer, I don't see an issue with them taking a safe route by trying their best to preserve everything that's already working in their existing versions of the game. I know people will scoff at taking the easy route but as a person who does programming for a living I can totally understand the feeling of wanting to play it safe when working with something you might not be entirely familiar with.



My third point is something that I don't think many people would think of. Now, even I will admit, I'm likely giving Namco Bandai and FromSoftware too much credit by suggesting that this is a reason GFWL was selected but with both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Dark Souls they were adamant about isolation and the feeling of being alone during the game. They even went to the extremes of booting you out of your current game on the Xbox 360 version if you tried to join an Xbox Live party. As anyone who uses Steam knows, by hitting Shift+Tab you can bring up the Steam overlay and contact any of your other Steam friends, even start up voice chats with them. Perhaps the developers wanted to preserve the alone feeling of Dark Souls on PC by denying them the ability to voice chat with others while playing the game, but what if it was deemed impossible (or they were denied by Valve) to disable Steam overlay or voice chat during Dark Souls? Citing the already mentioned similarities GFWL has to its Xbox 360 cousin, it's also probable to guess that perhaps there's an ability to disable any sort of similar communication abilities within GFWL. Once again, I'm not going to fault Dark Souls PC for taking a step to try and preserve as much of itself as it can. Yes, I know PC gamers could quickly hop on Skype or Ventrillo and very quickly solve this problem anyway (just like you could workaround this hurdle on the consoles).

You know what, think about this as well – Dark Souls is all about difficulty and suffering, if Games for Windows Live is as terrible as some people make it out to be, perhaps its inclusion in Dark Souls is some sort of way to provoke a kind of meta-suffering for the player. Actually, you know what, if that was their actual reason for using GFWL in Dark Souls I think I would buy every game FromSoftware makes from now until eternity because the sheer brilliance of that is beyond comprehension and must be rewarded.



I understand that people want the best possible Dark Souls for PC that they can get, and like I said I would probably prefer Steamworks as well. In fact, I'll openly admit that a couple of my defenses for the game using GFWL are weak. But come on people, getting this game for PC in the first place was a bit of a gift nobody initially expected. When FromSoftware or Namco Bandai consider porting another game to PC in the future I really don't want them to look back and remember gamers spitting in their face. Not to mention I just don't want to see people ruin one of the rare moments of good will between consumer and creator.

Overall my advice is simple and its something even I should listen to once and a while - take a step back and chill, before we deem Dark Souls dead on arrival for PC lets actually wait and see if Games for Windows Live even causes any issues in the first place.

Or, how this isn’t an industry wide conspiracy to make you buy your old games again

HD remakes have happened sporadically this generation, however, in the recent few months we’ve seen a few of them pop up, examples including Metal Gear Solid HD, Silent Hill HD, & Devil May Cry HD. Given the lack of backwards compatibility support for newly manufactured Playstation 3’s & Nintendo Wii’s, along with Xbox ceasing to update the 360 for compatibility with previous generation titles, areas of the internet gaming community seem to be claiming that this is all an attempt to milk consumers further by killing our ability to play our old generation games and make us repurchase them for newer systems. Accompanying this are claims that this trend of next-generation remakes for future systems is going to continue on into the Playstation 4/NextBox era, especially anytime a rumor pops up that says the next gen systems won’t have backwards compatibility.

People need to take a deep breath and put away their tinfoil hats for now because this isn’t some lavish money hungry conspiracy and isn’t the reason HD collections are popping up, in fact the reasons behind this are completely different.

I’m going to take a moment to sidestep a little on my topic and address backwards compatibility first. Personally I think backwards compatibility is an overrated feature, and I think Sony spoiled us a little with the backwards compatibility found in the PS2 and early PS3 models. Lots of people got uppity after Sony announced that Playstation 2 backwards compatibility was being removed from the Playstation 3 and (I shit you not) I heard gamers complain that their right to play their PS2 games was being taken away. You know what you should do if your Playstation 3 can’t play Playstation 2 games? The answer is hooking up your Playstation 2, that system which plays Playstation 2 games. If the two minutes it takes to hook up that system is really too much for you I really have to ask you how you survived all those years before the Playstation 2 back when systems like the Super Nintendo couldn’t play NES era games.



Playstation 3 backwards compatibility wasn’t removed in order to cut costs or milk consumers, I thought the actual reason why was well-known but it apparently needs to be explained again. The reason the Playstation 3 lost the ability to play Playstation 2 games was because the Playstation 2 system was, at the time, still selling strong and it was pulling in substantial profits for Sony since they could make the PS2 cheaply at that point. In short, the backwards compatible Playstation 3 was killing Sony’s own profits. I hold absolutely no ill-will towards Sony for cutting out PS3 backwards compatibility because it doesn’t take any sort of business genius to understand that selling one product that’s directly hurting the profits of another one of your products is a terrible idea. You could argue that after Playstation 2 sales finally fell off Sony could have brought back Playstation 3 backwards compatibility. However, if they did that they would have to release another version of the PS3, resulting in three different standards being out there at the same time (original PS3s through used markets, the 2nd generation PS3s, and the hypothetical 3rd generation). If there’s anything I think Sony learned from the PSP, I’d hope that “not releasing a multiple versions of the same system” would be it.

Returning to my main topic, the reason we’re seeing remakes of last-generation titles isn’t necessarily an evil money making scheme where CEO’s sit in their dark torch lit offices reading from the Necronomicon while thinking of ways to repackage Sly Cooper. The actual reason is much more understandable and is also the reason I highly doubt we’ll see bundles or collections like this happen much, if at all, in the next generation of systems. If you proceed through reading the next few paragraphs and think “yeah, this stuff is pretty obvious” then congratulations, you are not my target audience (but thanks for reading, though!).



Between the release of the Playstation 2 era systems and the current generation systems something happened that ended up completely changing the landscape of all home entertainment – it was called the HDTV – specifically HDTV’s that were affordable for the average household. As old school tube TV’s got replaced by nice flat panel displays it meant those old red/white/yellow composite connections got outdated by component connections or HDMI cables. This meant that picture quality for PS2 games dropped immediately, arguably looking even worse than they did on the old TVs, since they were running at a much lower resolution than the HDTVs projected at. This could be remedied (slightly) if you bought a component cable for your PS2 or Xbox, but it still didn’t help much (as the Wii continues to prove). Besides higher resolutions suddenly making our games look like ass, the other big change with HDTV’s came with the suddenly wider aspect ratio. Most (but not all) PS2/Xbox era games were set up to run on 4:3 displays, not the 16:9 HDTV displays. HDTV’s generally have a feature that lets you squish the picture into a 4:3 aspect ratio, but do you seriously want to waste all that extra space on the sides?

The reason we’ve seen these HD bundles pop-up is because a lot of great games from the previous generation barely missed out on this jump in display technology. Due to just missing out on this, those same great games ended up looking bland or stretched on the (now commonplace) home televisions, and some of those games could have greatly benefited from being built for a high-definition age. This is why we've seen high profile games from the previous generation get an HD rebirth, such as Shadow of the Colossus or Devil May Cry, because developers and publishers are giving these games a justly earned rebirth so gamers can enjoy them in the best way possible. On that note, another reason why these HD bundles aren't some double-purchase conspiracy is because quite frankly the amount of HD remakes we've seen in comparison to the overall library of PS2/Xbox/Gamecube games is unbelievably small. For the most part every game that's seen any sort of HD remake, whether it be Ico/Shadow of the Colossus, Halo Anniversary, or Metal Gear Solid 3, are a microscopic fraction of the overall previous-gen library available and are all titles of the highest quality or notoriety. Basically all of the games that see this kind of treatment are extremely notable games that quite frankly deserve this kind of extra recognition (and the only reason Devil May Cry 2 was ever given the HD treatment was more or less just because it was an unncessary tag-along in order to say “the entire trilogy”). I won't be concerned about these kind of HD bundles getting out of control until we see things like Call of Duty: Big Red One HD or Brute Force HD.



I've also heard it be hinted at that if backwards compatibility doesn't happen with the next console generation we'll see more re-releases, except with games popping up from this current generation. I highly doubt this is a possibility because, as I explained, a lot of the HD remakes happening this generation were a result of the upgrade to high definition technology. What would be the point of doing a remake for a game like Uncharted 2 on the Playstation 4? Would it be the Uncharted 2 HD-HD Collection? Nothing like that would happen because there's absolutely no reason to do so, since your PS3 era games will look fine anyways. Plus if the next generation systems have substantial hardware changes compared to what we currently have, which has been a rumor with the PS4, getting functioning backwards compatibility would be extremely tricky. The early PS3's worked around this by actually putting the PS2 hardware within the system, something I highly doubt they'd recreate with the PS4 by including PS3 tech inside of it. This means that the PS4's backwards compatibility would rely on an internal emulator similar to what the Xbox 360 uses for original Xbox games, and that isn't always a very safe route to go by since emulators are never completely reliable (anybody who's played KOTOR on the 360, for example, might know this).

HD remakes exist to provide fans with better experiences for their games, not to milk them out for all they're worth. There's plenty of reason to assume that this trend isn't anything that's going to explode out of control or continue on beyond this console cycle.

Hey I missed out on this trend last time it was popular too so I wanted in on some of the fun, I don't get many chances to totally kick back on my blog. Honestly, I had a little bit of a hard time thinking of things to throw in here because anybody who's talked to me a lot already knows lots about me.

1) I met my girlfriend at an anime convention


I really could have put “I go to anime conventions” as a thing here, but that's too boring. Why not talk about something more awesome like how I met my awesome girlfriend at one? We struck up a friendship at a local convention and things just grew from there. I like to think it was my awesome personality that won me over with, however I was also cosplaying as Dante from Devil May Cry 3 at the time.. so that probably helped a little since she has a big thing for DMC. However, I knew I was on to something potentially amazing when she showed up at the Godzilla panel I was hosting at that convention (and actually stayed through the whole thing!).

2) I've watched every Godzilla movie to date


Godzilla movies are fucking awesome, this is a law of the universe and is something I've already discussed. But just to clarify I have literally watched every Godzilla film that has ever been made, starting with 1954's Gojira to 2004's Godzilla: Final Wars. I've even suffered through the lackluster 1998 American Godzilla film where they actually kill Godzilla with standard military... and any true King of the Monsters fan knows that is wrong in every way. Also, I specified movies because I haven't watched any of the Zone Fighter shows that have Godzilla show up in them. I have yet to watch any of the standalone Mothra movies either, because fuck Mothra.

3) I have a kitten named after Nyan Cat


He's named Poptart. And he's totally adorable. He's also trying to jump on my keyboard as I'm typing this right now. This will also now get totally topsauced because nobody can resist an adorable kitten.

4) I think the 80s was the greatest decade in film history


This picture is one of the walls of my apartment, there are more like it. The goal is to turn the living room into an awesome movie poster realm. But seriously... just think about all of the awesome popcorn movies that came between 1980 and 1989. Airplane! Die Hard, RoboCop, Commando, Aliens, Ghostbusters, Wrath of Khan, Empire Strikes Back, Back to the Future and so on. I really could go on for a long time, because there were seriously that many good movies pumped out in the 80s. I would have no problem if Hollywood was somehow caught in some odd Star Trek-esk time paradox that had them constantly pumping out 80s movies.

5) I'd write for Destructoid if they asked (maybe)


Because writing for the site would be totally awesome. I like Destructoid and any attempt I had to further contribute to it would be amazing. The only reason I say maybe is because I already have a full time job, having a second job would be a little too much for me considering how much I enjoy having free time. My contributions would be, at most, something like the occasional review or opinion piece. But hey Niero or Jim, if either of you read this please let me have the DmC review!

6) I tend to not run out of desktop space on my computer


Because fuck needing to minimize shit. Also, click the image above for the full sized one.

7) I sold my Dreamcast and never regretted it


Because I had a Playstation 2, and it was better.

8) People think I'm confrontational when I really just enjoy a good healthy debate


Anybody who either follows my blog or talks with me over on the Outer Heaven chat knows I express my opinion, perhaps too much sometimes. I also like debating opinions with people a lot as well. The problem with this is that it gives people a bit of a bad opinion about me, and I honestly understand why. People occasionally think I'm a bit of a jerk who only listens to his own voice. Like I said, I can understand why however it's far from the truth. I really enjoy debating, I just think its fun and I like to see how other people present their opinions (whether it's done really well or really poorly as well). Honestly a large amount of stuff I debate people about are usually things I honestly don't give a shit about (a recent example being Mass Effect 3's ending). I just like to debate for the fun of debating, unfortunately in our over-sensitive modern times people tend to think that simply taking a different stance than your own is “confrontational” or some sort of personal attack on others (Outer Heaven chat recently just went through an ordeal like this).

9) I'm a big WWF/WWE fan


Yeah, wrestling is fake so don't bother asking me if I know it's not real. It makes you look stupid, the kind of stupid that would accompany you if you asked someone watching Iron Man 2 if “you know Tony Stark is fake right?”. I've been a pro-wrestling fan for a couple of decades, and continue being one. Hell, I just started writing this blog after turning off Raw (by the way, in case you missed it Brock Lesnar came back and totally laid out John Cena). I'm also a huge comic book fan so I'm naturally accustomed to liking things that are silly or over the top, given how wrestling in many ways parallels the silly antics of most comics it's just a natural pairing for me.

10) I think Knob Creek is a delicious whiskey that you should all try.


It also gets you really fucking drunk pretty fucking fast. Drinking this stuff led to me watching Superman 3 with my friends and not realizing Richard Pryor was in the movie until 50 minutes in (spoiler: he's the first person you see in the movie). Oh, and if you manage to find a 1.5 liter bottle of this stuff make sure you drink it with friends otherwise you'll have to stare at this unholy challenger to your liver's well being for months.

Sometimes I wish I was a writer for video games. To be specific, I wish they’d invent a job specifically for me where other writers & editors give me their one hundred percent finished story and let me go through everything in order to make it better, RedLetterMedia style. Why? Because I can be a compulsive nitpicker when it comes to a story’s plot especially if it’s a story (or part of a franchise) I care about a lot, in fact I’d safely say that the more I like something the more I nitpick at it. Because of this, my fictitious job title should be “Chief Executive in Charge of Bullshit Nitpicking”, or CECBN for short. Stupid plot decisions or plot holes eat away at me big time. If I actively played Mass Effect I’d probably be on their side of the whole “ending fiasco” that’s taking place (though I wouldn’t go to the extremes some have, because they’re terrible people who apparently support George Lucas). Also, if you get annoyed by people nitpicking at things I’d recommend you step away now.

Generally I’m not in favor of fans having substantial say in how video games (and other media, for that matter) are made, yet I am starting to be more in favor of the idea that video games (story wise and gameplay wise) should be screened in front of audiences before going gold. This does happen to certain degrees already; lots of games do various kinds of beta testing and quality assurance. However not all games go through beta testing and, as Skyrim on PS3 proved, not all internal quality assurance is up to par. Along with this, storylines never seem to get screened much at all in the video game world whereas in Hollywood and TV there are pre-screenings and pilot episodes to get audience feedback. Stuff such as this would help prevent fiascos, like the aforementioned Mass Effect 3 one, from ever happening in the first place. Considering how the internet explodes the moment almost anything happens, steps to help prevent this wouldn’t be bad.



Batman: Arkham City is one of those games where I really wish Rocksteady came to me first with a copy of the game and told me to point out anything that seems wrong. Now don’t get me wrong, Arkham City was a totally sweet game and deserved a lot of the accolades it recieved. However, City’s third act was a massive drop-off in storyline quality compared to the rest of the game and it led to a bunch of questions from me as well as generally feeling rushed. Arkham City has been around for a while, however, I’m going to give a big old fashioned boldfaced SPOILER WARNING here out of courtesy because I’m going to be discussing plot elements of the game as well as the ending here. So if you don’t want spoilers, well, look someplace else.

From right around the time you need to storm Hugo Strange’s tower in Arkham City until the end credits of the game itself, things fell apart in my opinion. After you clear out Strange’s tower of the bad guys and prepare to take down Strange himself Ra’s Al Ghul pops up out of nowhere and murders Strange. We, rather out of the left field, find out that Strange has been working with Ra’s Al Ghul the whole time because this was all some strange attempt to cleanse Gotham in one big swoop. Why did they have to go through the whole effort of creating a Snake Plisken-esk prison city in order to gather and murder everyone when everyone was still sitting happily in Arkham Asylum in the last game? Yeah, I know, this way Strange had the Gotham City police’s firepower on his side to speed up the blowing up of things. But this is the DC Universe, people, with all of Ra’s international ties you think he could have made the whole thing a lot easier by just finding some super weapon. Ra’s then explains why he decides to murder his wannabe heir, and it’s because Batman proved he was still better than Strange. No fucking shit, of course Batman is still better! Batman is main reason 95% of Arkham City’s population is even there. Plus, Ra’s, it took Batman storming Strange’s tower to convince you Batman was still the boss? I would have thought Batman completing a series of trials that nobody else has even survived, and beating the shit out of you afterwards, would have been enough to convince you that Batman is still top dog.

Then, because he’s obviously upset about being double crossed, Strange activates a bomb in order to try and blow up he, Ra’s, and Batman all at once. Ra’s and Batman manage to escape, and Ra’s decides to commit suicide even though the fall was already going to kill him anyway. Besides all of the annoying head scratchers I listed above you know what else bugged me? The whole “Strange knows who Batman is” angle of the story never gets resolved. No, Strange dying does not resolve the issue because we never even find out how he discovered Batman’s true identity. Did he deduce it himself? If so, how? Or is there a potential security leak somewhere that led Strange to Bruce Wayne? Considering Batman is supposed to be the world’s greatest detective, these are questions that Batman would definitely want answered. Due to this unresolved plot thread now there are only two reasons why Strange knowing Batman’s identity is even relevant, getting Bruce into Arkham and shoe-horning Ra’s into the finale. Using the identity subplot as a reason to get Batman into Arkham ends up being stupid without any proper resolution because they could have thought of a bunch of other simpler reasons to get Batman there, like having him fly in on the Bat-plane… which he already uses early in the game to get all of his Bat-shit anyway



Then we get to the big final scenes with Batman, Joker, Talia, and Clayface. Without going into too much detail; Talia tries to murder Joker since she knew Batman wouldn’t do it himself, we find out healthy-Joker is a ruse because he’s actually Clayface, and real Joker shoots Talia. I have no problem with the Clayface decoy part of this and it was actually a pretty nice little fake-out, it actually reminded me of the Hush storyline where Clayface posed as Jason Todd. However if Talia was just going to murder Joker anyway why did she wait a couple of hours to do it, and do it in a place that was clearly designed to be a trap for Batman (and therefore a trap for herself). This really isn’t really a plot hole per say, it’s just a bit of lazy writing that really irks me even by comic book standards.

Finally we hit the point in the game where Batman & Joker are knocked unconscious. Eventually Batman wakes up, Joker’s cure vile gets destroyed, and Joker dies. So, Batman was unconscious for an undisclosed amount of time and Joker not only woke up first but had the time to sneak into hiding so that he could ambush Batman with a knife. Why would Joker not drink the cure while Batman was bat-napping and do the one possible thing that would guarantee he doesn’t get the cure? Joker’s crazy however he’s not an idiot. Joker’s also well aware that Batman will not murder people or let them die (in fact Joker casually mocks this trait in the previous game) so all he really needs to do is sit around and wait for Batman to wake up, because he knows Batman will keep him alive.



The whole sequence is lazily written and exists simply to force some bizarre dramatic ending with Joker finally biting the big one. I understand Joker’s death in this game was supposed to be an allegory to Mark Hamill stepping down as the voice of Joker (something he’s apparently rescinded), however if you’re going to do something like that then please put more thought into it. Instead the entire sequence ends up feeling more out of character for Joker than even his Super-Joker transformation in Arkham Asylum. In fact, I would say Asylum’s ending is a better ending in general because while it’s still lame it at least makes sense. As one final silly nitpick, considering Joker refers to Talia as the love of Batman’s life… don’t you think it would have made more sense for Batman to carry Talia out of Arkham instead of Joker? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d leave someone I loved in a half broken theater with the remnants of Clayface. Oh, I love how Commissioner Gordon totally doesn’t give a crap about Joker being dead beyond a “what happened” and just lets Batman leave. Just funny because I distinctly remember at least one or two occurrences in the comics where Gordon held Batman at gunpoint to stop him from murdering Joker.

I loved Arkham City, I really did, so please don’t interpret all of my nitpicking as me hating on a game or anything like that. I just really get annoyed at bullcrap plot mistakes that could have easily been remedied with some common sense (which is why The Dark Knight should have ended with everyone blaming Joker for Two-Face’s murders, by the way). Thus, it really bugs me that such a great game had to end on a disappointing down-note.

Oh and one last thing… why were Catwoman and Poison Ivy apparently having the exact same conversation for hours while Catwoman hung upside down?

The InSephtion is a semi-frequent (read: when I feel like it) series of opinion pieces were I attempt to implant, or otherwise remove, a thought or series of thoughts from your mind.

Did you click it? Are you here? Testing, testing. Okay good you're here. Sorry, I needed a flashy title to rope some of you guys in here. Why? Because if I used a title that was slightly more appropriate for this I know you guys wouldn’t click here because you’re more than likely sick of this topic.

Yes - I’m going to talk about Mass Effect 3.

First let me get this out of the way – In my last episode of InSephtion I talked about how Mega Man fans had become the worst fans in video gaming, surpassing Sonic fans. I need to extend my deepest apologies to all fans of the Blue Bomber because I clearly underestimated just how utterly terrible groups of Mass Effect fans could be.

Just to clarify, I do not play Mass Effect. I have nothing against the series what so ever and I find its universe rather interesting, however the games themselves just don’t pull me in the same way an Armored Core or Dark Souls title can. I can’t explain why, it just happens. Because of this I’m not going to discuss why the ending of Mass Effect 3 is or is not a good ending to the trilogy as it’s not my place to discuss plot details about something I have little knowledge of, that and I quite frankly don’t care. What I am going to talk about is the fact that Mass Effect fans have taken this whole fiasco over the ending and blown it so far out of proportion that I can’t even make up a fake word that properly conveys a sense of scale to this.

This is an opinion piece that will talk about how they’re treating this whole ordeal, not why they’re doing it.

Allow me to put a short disclaimer here before I go any further. This is just a little warning that I should have also put in my Mega Man blog I linked to earlier, because apparently people didn’t have the common sense to just assume this. I am fully aware that there are a large amount of Mass Effect 3 fans that are perfectly fine with the ending as it is and are equally disappointed in how other sections of the fanbase are reacting. In this blog I’m going to refer to these vocal protesters of ME3’s as “the Mass Effect fanbase” or in some similar fashion that will make it seem like I’m talking about the entire fanbase, please understand that I’m directing all of my comments at and about a specific subsection of the fanbase and not the fanbase as a whole.

Mass Effect 3’s ending isn’t the greatest thing in the world, okay, we get it. We also understand that you, the ME fanbase, aren’t exactly happy about it. What you guys don’t seem to understand, however, is that not everybody agrees with you and there are people who *gasp* are perfectly fine with the ending of the game. I’ve seen people persistently complain about sites like Destructoid constantly harping on ME3 fans who are upset about the ending, but yet when someone does anything remotely in support of the games ending these same fans turn around and accuse these supporters of “not getting it” or being paid off by Bioware/EA. I’m surprised nobody has accused of Jim Sterling being in bed with Hitler for daring to say that writers aren’t paid off by EA to support the ending. Talking about Mass Effect 3 in general has become such a divisive topic that it’s gotten to the point where no productivity is ever accomplished through normal discussion, which is an alarmingly bad sign. What’s ultimately not being understood here is that the damage fans are causing in their attempt for a better ending is just as great as, if not greater than, the damage the ending itself caused to the credibility of the franchise.

It’s okay to not like the ending of something. It’s perfectly okay to be upset that something ending on a sour note. It’s perfectly okay to talk about why something ended poorly. It isn’t okay to start some pseudo-righteous campaign demanding that BioWare change their game while you stand outside their building with burning torches and pitchforks. Even if you have good reason to demand something like this it’s just not the right thing to do. Not only are you slapping every single writer, many of which probably contributed to everything you did like about Mass Effect in the first place, in face you’re also undermining the credibility of the game in general as well as permanently staining the reputation of the game itself. Even if you manage to get the ending of the game changed/altered it will never be known as the ‘true’ ending of the game but rather be known as “the other ending”, or something akin to a pacifier. If this whole fiasco had not happened Mass Effect 3 and the trilogy as a whole would be forever known as an amazing science fiction series and people would gloss over the fact that it ended on a slightly sour note. Remember how in Batman Begins Bruce spends the entire movie saying he won’t murder people only to pretty much murder Ra’s in the end? That fact is glossed over now and the movie is remembered fondly because nobody made a big stink of an obvious plot error. If the ending of ME3 does get changed, that new ending will exist as a constant reminder of a terrible moment in a fandom’s existence while also making the original crappy ending even more prevalent and be an ever present unavoidable stain regardless if this ending is “better” or “worse”.



This isn’t the first, and it won’t be the last, time something great has ended on a lackluster note or have noticeable plot holes. Batman: Arkham City has a heaping pile of plot holes in its ending, The Dark Knight’s ending is unnecessarily stupid, I’ve heard from numerous people that the ending to The Dark Tower series by Stephen King is poor, The Matrix sequels happened, and a Tyrannosaurs Rex can magically use human sized doors and move ninja-silently just so he can save our heroes in Jurassic Park. You know what, I’m sure if I had enough time I could find some plot holes or issues with Metal Gear Solid if I wanted and that series has an ending so long it could be nominated for an Oscar in the short-film category. Yes the entire problem isn’t entirely just plot issues and I’m aware of that, another issue is how the ending doesn’t really include many of your characters decisions or actions throughout the trilogy. You know what, Deus Ex: Human Revolution similarly discarded most of your choices at the end for a few preset endings too.

You know what’s the same about all of these examples I listed above? Groups of people didn’t demand to make these things better so that they could reach a higher level of personal satisfaction. They accepted it and moved on, because they understood that it’s just a story and it isn’t something that’s going to dramatically alter their life or the world as a whole.

My point is things like this happen. Nobody likes a dull ending or a plot hole but we generally have an understanding that things like this can happen. Stories are for humans, are written by humans, and as the saying goes “nobody is perfect”. To paraphrase the Borg Queen in Star Trek: First Contact; “Stories are imperfect things created by imperfect people”. Oh by the way, First Contact is another thing with plot holes and continuity issues that people didn’t report to the FTC.

And before you say “Mass Effect 3’s ending is worse than those” let me promptly tell you no, it’s not. No ending to anything is so bad that it should reach the overblown level of frenzy it’s reached at this point. You also have zero right to demand that the ending be changed & you have absolutely no claim to that what so ever. Just because your fans and consumers doesn’t give you the empowerment to order people around and tell them how to do their jobs. The right to give your opinion is freely available, but the right to demand is not. You are not investors in BioWare or Electronic Arts so stop pretending you are. It is not your place to do that and all you’re doing is making you, all the people that agree with you, and all of the people who consider themselves fans of Mass Effect, look like a bunch of egocentric children who are angry because your parents wouldn’t let you get a new toy on your trip to Wal-Mart.

There’s another reason you shouldn’t demand BioWare going back to change things.



This man is George Lucas, he’s the man who gave the world Star Wars. Mr. Lucas gave the world one of the most well-known franchises in history, one that has spawned an indescribably large fanbase. Yet, despite being the creator, a large contingent of this massive fanbase generally despises George Lucas and everything he touches. You know what? I bet some of you reading this are some of those very same people. Why does a fanbase hate its own creator so much?

Because of going back to change things.

If there’s any one fanbase out there that has a legitimate reason to gripe and demand as much as Mass Effect fans have lately, it’s Star Wars fans. Hell, I’d say they’re the only fanbase that has that much of a right. They’ve had to sit through so much terrible crap that they’d probably openly laugh at Mass Effect fans who whine about 10 minutes of a 200+ hour three-game experience. These fans have had to sit through three poorly written prequels that essentially crapped on tons of plot elements, including having to suffer through one of the most memorable villains ever being turned into an angst-ridden hormone raging teenager.

I’m not going to spend an hour ripping on the Star Wars prequels though, RedLetterMedia is the place to go for an educated analysis on why those movies failed and why George Lucas isn’t the real reason Star Wars was successful. What I am going to talk about are the other things that these fans have to suffer through, which is everything else he does to the franchise.

Besides sitting through terrible prequel movies, and a creator who openly trolls his fans, fans of this series have to suffer because the original movies they enjoyed constantly get revised and butchered by a man who can’t stop going back to change things while simultaneously refusing to release the original copies that people loved. Things that established the fundamental basis for how we knew Han Solo were changed thanks to the “Han Shoots First” problem, not to mention it made Greedo look like the worst bounty hunter ever. Crap was thrown out there to try and wow us with computer graphics instead of just letting us see the main characters or leaving things the way they were. Darth Vader’s silent sacrifice was changed in order to make it blatantly obvious that he didn’t want his son to die, thus ruining all of the dramatic impact the scene originally had (along with reminding us of a terrible black mark from the prequels). And an actor who never appeared in the original trilogy what so ever, and has likely never met any of the original cast, was placed into Return of the Jedi in Lucas’s own stupid attempt to bring a full-circle sense of closure to all six movies.



Why am I bringing all of this up, you ask? To remind Mass Effect fans how terrible going back to change things can in fact be and why it shouldn’t be done even if it’s for good. And if you people manage to get Mass Effect 3’s ending altered, which it’s more and more looking like a possibility, do you know what you’ll do? You’ll be saying that it’s okay to go back and change things. You’ll be validating that it’s okay to do things like George Lucas does.

Don’t validate George Lucas.

It’s okay to be upset if the ending isn’t that good, but you’re all simply taking it too far. Take a deep breath and look at the floor below you, what you see is the world still revolving after Mass Effect 3’s ending. Like so many other fans in the world, this is something you really just need to take on the chin and move on. Mass Effect is too good of a series to drag through the mud like this over one thing, no matter how bad that one thing is.

In light of Mr Andy Dixon’s moving blog about how the cBlogs are going to make an attempt at being relevant again, I’ve decided that my first contribution to this attempt is… yes, a silly Top 5 list that has little to no shot at popping up on the front page (now that I’ve said this, Dixon might do it for lulz), because hey if Chad can do a bunch of Top 10 pieces why cant I. According to others I’ve apparently been on a pretty solid run with pretty entertaining blogs I guess, so here’s my attempt to both continue that trend and also ruin it by making a blog that’s primarily for laughs.

On a serious note about this, I’m actually happy to see that there’s a renewed hope of keeping this part of Destructoid significant. You really shouldn’t need incentives like being front-paged in order to write quality cBlogs here, however the hope of being recognized on the front-page is still something very worthwhile and I have to say from personal experience getting your shit on the front page just feels damn good. When I first came to Destructoid the community felt like it was a lot more involved and cBlogs popped up on the front page at good frequency (especially on slow news days). I guess it’s just nice to see an injection of retro-Destructoid.

Now anyways, on to the main topic of this blog – RoboCop. I consider this the companion piece to my other blog that talked games that would rock with Godzilla. Everybody loves RoboCop… everybody. If you don’t then you’re likely either a criminal or Dick Jones, or maybe that snobby bitch from RoboCop 2 who was desperate to be Bob Morton version 2.0. RoboCop in my opinion is the quintessential 80’s action film. That might not seem like much at first, but when you think about it and remember that the 80s was the greatest era of movies ever you realize what a grand compliment that is. But you know what sucks? RoboCop doesn’t get shit for love in the video game world anymore. The last decent game he was in was RoboCop vs Terminator and that was back in the god damn SNES era. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about RoboCop, obviously, but the fact that it’s been so long since I’ve talked about him and we still haven’t seen shit regarding RoboCop games means that I need to talk about this more!

And now, on to the awesome list with my amazing Photoshop skills.

5- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3


Get twenty-five kills = spawn RoboCop. Need I really say more? Like Godzilla, a killstreak involving everyone’s favorite law enforcer would definitely make the game better. This wouldn’t be something where you just spawn a Juggernaut on a map either, you’d actually spawn as RoboCop – complete with the burst fire Auto-9 (which in this game would one-hit-kill everyone) and the movement speed that’s just slow enough to make you wonder how he gets anything done. Oh, and you can’t knife kill him either since you are not Red Foreman and lack a giant metal rod to jam into his chest. Double oh, and RoboCop can pop out his data-spike and melee kill you with it. Triple oh, and RoboCop has always-on radar and all enemies are highlighted in green. Quadruple oh, you’re boned if you try to fight RoboCop.

4- Soul Calibur


Soul Calibur jumped the shark/nuked the fridge the moment Darth Vader showed up and his lightsaber didn’t one-hit-destroy everything, and you could argue that Spawn was just as damaging to the franchises “credibility”. So don’t even bother complaining that “RoboCop doesn’t fit in here though!” when it’s clear that Namco doesn’t really give too much of a shit about things making 100% complete sense in Soul Calibur. None of the guest characters in these games have ever made sense and they’re thrown in there just because it was a cool idea to do.

Now your first question is very predictable and very understandable; “Why the hell wouldn’t RoboCop just shoot everyone?” Cervantes has a gun, why doesn’t he use it all of the time? Like I said, Soul Calibur doesn’t really need to make sense. How come Siegfried can viciously uppercut people with his ridiculous person-sized sword and nobody ever gets sliced in half? See, we’re back to that “not making sense” thing. RoboCop could be another one of the Astaroth-like heavy hitter characters. He’d be reasonably slow (obviously they’d have to speed him up from his movie speeds) and do a nice deal of damage. His primary weapon would be the data-spike and thus he’d actually be a close range character, meaning he’d probably have a good deal of health to make up for the fact that he’d probably be eating a lot of his. Robo would probably also get some pretty neat looking battle damage after taking a few shots from swords and other weapons.

Robo would be another fitting member of Soul Calibur’s not-fitting guest characters. Oh, and are you concerned that our eastern-based friends don’t truly understand RoboCop or that he’s really foreign to them? Hey, this isn’t the first time RoboCop has appeared in some form over on that side of the world (also, did anyone else notice the Back to the Future III music in there?)

3- LA Noire


Hey, RoboCop still has to do more than just blast people with his big gun (right?). He’s a cop so I figure he still has to do other cop things, like perhaps investigate and interrogate. With all of Robo’s fancy tech stuff in his dome you’d think they’d be able to take a good formula like LA Noire and put a sci-fi twist on it. Honestly the one aspect of RoboCop that never gets utilized well is his investigative portion, all of the movies basically just have him kick down a door, shoot people, and then beat up people until he gets what he wants. Understandably this formula works, however you have to assume that at some point in time he’s going to show up at a crime scene after the crime is over right? Plus, if OCP truly built a cop-for-the-future you’d think he’d be the total package of detective-and-ass-kicker that would technically obsolete present day cops.

Plus interrogation sequences in this fictional game would be hilarious. Imagine the look on a potential criminals face when he finds out he’s about to be interrogated by a fucking cyborg with a giant spike in his hand. The police station would probably have a specially designed RoboCop interrogation room complete with a special chair that automatically cleans itself up after detainees shit their pants the moment Robo walks into the room.

On a more serious point about why this game would be neat – utilizing some of RoboCop’s functions in an LA Noire type scenario would be pretty handy in solving crimes. Instead of having to remember (or sort through a notebook full of notes) what someone said during an investigation, RoboCop could just call up the video file of the interrogation/questioning itself (because anything RoboCop records can be used as certified evidence).

2- Mortal Kombat


I’ve already suggested RoboCop in MK once before. I’m saying it again because hot damn it should happen. Before you scream at me that Robo doesn’t have any kind of place in this game, hear me out okay? The Mortal Kombat universe already has cyborgs that have brains of living people (Cyrax, Sector) and they already have cops that can for some reason use their guns during a martial arts death match (Stryker, Sonya). How does RoboCop not fit into this?

And if you’re concerned about story there’s always ways you can shoe-horn Robo into it (they made it work damn well with Freddy after all). How about this – RoboCop catches wind of the Mortal Kombat tournament finding out that it’s a series of unsanctioned death matches and that all of the participants are (or are about to be) vicious murderers. Bam – right there Directive 3 (uphold the law) is all up in RoboCop’s face, and the whole “saving Earthrealm by winning the tournament” thing probably falls under both Directives 1 and 2 (serve the public trust & protect the innocent). The Mortal Kombat tournament would attract RoboCop faster than Nicolas Cage to a paycheck from a shitty movie. Heh, one cool storyline twist could be that Shang Tsung turns into Dick Jones or the OCP CEO to screw with RoboCop’s hidden 4th directive.

The original RoboCop film is also a pretty bloody affair too. There’s that awesome scene were ED209 blasts that one dude away for what seems like a solid minute, or when Robo stabs the bad guy right in the neck and gets covered in blood. So he’d totally fit in with the gore that is Mortal Kombat.

1- Grand Theft Auto (or pretty much any open world game)


Okay, just listen to me on this one. Picture Grand Theft Auto, but instead of being one of the crime lords or working for one… you’re RoboCop instead!. You get to drive around in your awesome 80s Ford Taurus all day and stop bad guys from committing crimes as the best law enforcer ever. Crimes would just randomly play out in the streets similar to what you’d get in LA Noir or those good open-world Spider-Man games… except this would be better, because RoboCop. Of course there would be a main storyline to follow, the game cant entirely be Stay out of Trouble Simulator 2012 (or can it?), there would unquestionably be some main plot about a crime lord threatening to take over Old Detroit and likely some OCP corruption thrown in as well.

To keep gamers going there could be nice things like an experience system that could provide RoboCop with upgrades. Stuff like additional ammo, damage, enhanced armor, or cool stuff like the Cobra Assault Cannon (state of the art – bang bang) would definitely help when you need to get the job done. We’d have to make sure stupid shit like rocket-arms or jetpacks stay out of the game though, basically if it debuted in RoboCop 3 it shouldn’t be used.

Of course there would also be occasional silly things, like malfunctioning ED-209's once and a while that you have to put down too and occasional bosses like Cain or something like that. To be honest, I don't know why I'm explaining this any more... if you cant figure out why this is the best idea ever, you are clearly screwed up in the brain.

So there, 5 things that instantly become better when you add in RoboCop. This list can go on forever, no seriously it can because RoboCop literally makes everything better. Simply put, the world needs more RoboCop! And yes, I know there's a reboot movie coming out next year.