Disappointing game-related things of the year 2010?!?!

[slimequest]

Although I'm not a person to demonize faceless corporations because they didn't do a video game thing the way I wanted them to or something, I'm not exactly thrilled with Sony right now. Well, I should say, I'm not happy with anybody involved in the PS3 division, anyway.

You see, I've had two PS3s die on me at this point. They were the original 60GB configuration with full backwards compatibility. This makes them the most feature-rich versions of the PS3, but unfortunately those versions were also constructed by disgruntled blind spider monkeys or something. Essentially, due to poor construction, if your launch-era PS3 has never gotten the "yellow light of death" yet, it probably will before too long. It's just a matter of time before the components give out.

So yeah, this has happened to me two times. The first time, I sent it back to super-official Sony house of repairs and got back a refurbished unit. All of my saves, and I mean all of them, were gone. No, I couldn't just hold onto my old HDD and stick it in the new one, because Sony designed the PS3 to auto-format an HDD when it's stuck into a different PS3 than it was originally put into. Why? At this point I have to believe there is no real reason other than to inflict harm on innocent people. And no, the repair techs simply couldn't transfer my saves or something, even though there is a built-in transfer capability in the PS3 itself. That might interrupt their very busy schedule of throwing dead PS3s at puppies while laughing and sipping coffee.

So I get the new PS3, transfer over whatever saves I had backed up previously, and try to treat this one extra super special so it won't explode like the last one. About a year and a half later? Exploded. On the day after Christmas. With my new copy of 3D Dot Game Heroes in it. Now, I knew I'd lose everything all over again if I sent it in to Sony, but I decided to see if anything had changed since last time. A few email exchanges later left me with the unfortunate truth: this company literally does not care about its consumers. Well, their saves, anyway.

The people I emailed told me that there was no guarantee I'd get my original PS3 back (which would let me keep the HDD at home and thus keep my saves), and that there was no way to even try for that. I'd probably get a refurbished unit, which equals no saves. And no, they can't (or won't) use any kind of transfer device to let me keep my saves if I got a refurb.

So, to recap: You can't switch HDDs between PS3s because Sony won't let you for some reason, and yet if your PS3 dies and won't turn on, there's no way to recover those saves, because the official Sony repair service won't even bother trying to help you with that.

I'd like to point out that the other consoles of this generation don't quite work that way. I had my Wii stop loading discs a little while after I got it, and the Nintendo rep over the phone actually asked me if I wanted them to transfer my data to the new unit they were sending me! So even if my Wii was dead in the water, I assume Nintendo actually tries to recover the data, or has some way of transferring it.

Ironically my Xbox 360 has never given me any problems despite its notorious reputation. Even if it did, the way the console's saves work, I'd never lose any of them. See, when you first start up a game, it asks you where you want the save files to go, assuming you have more than one compatible device connected. I always save everything to an external USB drive. That way, I can back it up easily and even if my 360 couldn't turn on, I could pop that USB drive into another one and have my saves still. I don't know how Microsoft's repair division handles things, but I'd hope they'd be a little nicer about retaining save data considering the whole RRoD fiasco.

But, seeing how this is a PS3 we're talking about and none of the above applies, I was out of luck in that department. However, I wasn't about to give Sony another $150 to send me another PS3 that'd probably die on me AND to delete my data for me, so I looked around for options. As it turns out, there's a thriving little market out there for people who get the YLoD and don't want to deal with Sony. Who would've guessed? I settled on Gophermods, because they seemed to get good things said about them online, plus their mascot is a lil' gopher. For about $80, they'd provide me with a mailing label and fix my original console, keeping my saves.

In the end that's exactly what they did, but after my PS3 came back, I had just enough time to get my disc out and back up my saves before it started up again. It's possible that after the thermal paste "cures" the system will be a little more stable and could stay on a little longer before shutting off, but I'm pretty much over it at this point. Yeah, it sucks huge amounts of ass that Sony got rid of backwards compatibility, more ass than anyone could think of, but I do have a functional PS2 and the upscaling wasn't that great anyway. Sadly, my saves are probably more safe on those little memory cards than they would be on a PS3's HDD, too. The money I paid was worth getting my game and my saves back, I'd say.

So instead of having Gophermods try again, I just got a Slim PS3. Here's hoping that not only does this PS3 stand the test of time, but that there will be enough good PS3 games to come out in the future to justify spending this much money on them.

Oh, and by the way, the "Backup Utility" on the PS3 is completely useless unless you wanted to format your own HDD or something. If you restore your backup onto another PS3 (which is the most likely reason you'd need to use it anyway), none of your copy-protected saves or virtual memory cards will be restored. So no, there's no real backup solution for your PS3 if it dies, and none of your saves are safe. Have a nice day!

I didn't want to deal with trying to get my old PS3 running long enough to attempt a data transfer between PS3s (which WOULD restore copy-protected stuff), so I just went ahead and made a new PSN ID (add it!). I kinda wanted to change my name anyway. It should be noted that this is possible on Xbox Live for a small fee, and you can actually change your display name whenever you want on a Japanese PSN account but, hey... nobody's perfect.

Okay, PS3 rant over. At least my new Slim is cute and uh... works. Yay!





Now, onto game disappointments of 2010! Not too many, thankfully, but there's stuff worth mentioning.

#1: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. Or as I like to call it, notCastlevania!

Sure, it was billed as a "reimagining" of the Castlevania series, which could've meant that they tossed out the convoluted mess that was the original timeline as an excuse to make more games in which a Belmont fights Dracula, but that's not really what happened. Instead, what I got in the mail was a game that was trying way too hard to appeal to "Westerners", which essentially meant tossing out everything that made Castlevania... Castlevania.

The first rule of Castlevania is that you have to have rockin' music. You just have to. Castlevania 64 gets shit because it didn't have much of a soundtrack, and rightly so. So what did they do with this game? Well, most of the time there isn't much music, but when there is some, it's straight out of "orchestral stuff that kinda sounds like it's from that one movie" land. So no classic tunes like Bloody Tears or Vampire Killer, but I'd be (almost) okay with that if they came up with new songs that kept the same spirit of your typical CV tracks. Instead, it's just completely forgettable and not Castlevania-y at all. Even if the game wasn't so great, at least we could've gotten a good soundtrack out of the whole deal, but...

The second rule of Castlevania is that you're Castlevania, you're not God of War or whatever other games this one is ripping off. I shouldn't have to perfectly execute some complicated string of combo attacks to finish off an enemy, this is Castlevania. Your whip/sword/whatever can kill things up close pretty easily, but it's better to attack from afar when you can, so you have projectiles for that. Enemies tend to die in only a couple of hits, but it's the sheer amount of them standing between you and your goal that's the problem. Plus, you don't want to get hurt too badly before the boss or if you're not near a healing/save point. That's what Castlevania games' fighting systems have always been about. Instead, with this game, I'm forced to play God of War, even though I've never wanted to play that series. The combos seem kind of cool until you realize you have to do them to EVERY ENEMY and even though you have dozens of moves, it seems pointless to use any beyond whatever stale, easily repeatable combo you can pull off without spraining something.

Oh, and a bazillion quick-time events. I've never really seen the appeal in these: it either ruins a perfectly good cutscene or turns a battle in which you SHOULD be able to kill the enemy any way you want into a linear battle where you have to do what the game thinks you should do to win. I've seen them done better in other games, but with this game they're in regular battles, boss battles, puzzles... you name it.

The third rule of Castlevania is that you're supposed to be true to yourself as a Castlevania game. Symphony of the Night had laughable voice acting and the graphics probably could've been better, being a PS1 game and all. But it was a much better "reimagining" of the series, by taking what had already been built and making it even more deep and interesting. It's funny that all the Western fans who love this game never seem to complain about Alucard looking girly or the other Japanese-influenced aspects of the game. They don't care because the game is fucking awesome first and foremost, and the game isn't trying to please anybody except people who like Castlevania.

Aria of Sorrow is also a better example of "reimagining" the storyline of Castlevania, by throwing a huge curveball into the plot 3/4 of the way through that honestly took balls to even think about doing. But in doing so, it made Castlevania's storyline much more interesting again. I'd play another Soma-based game in a heartbeat. Sure, he wore bellbottoms and furry collars in the first game and he's conveniently in ~*~JAPAN~*~, but even if those things make you cringe, the game's still good. That's what's important: it's a good game, AND it's a Castlevania game. If you are a fan of Castlevania, both of these things sound good to you. If you're not a fan already, at least you know it's good.

But what we have here isn't a reimagining of Castlevania, it's some game called "Lords of Shadow" with a couple of sticky notes slapped on it to appear to be a Castlevania game. Let's be honest, if Gabriel's name wasn't conveniently "Belmont" and those bosses he encountered didn't randomly share namesakes with past Castlevania characters, nobody would think this was a Castlevania game. Reviewers might comment that some guy having a whip-like weapon fighting undead things is kind of Castlevania-like, but that's where the similarities would end. Some Castlevania fans might seek it out because of those similarities, but none of them would expect it to really be a game from that series.

So, not only is it not a Castlevania game, but it's a game clearly designed to "appeal to Westerners", which in this case means making everything ugly. Even the "young girl" vampire character is ugly. Vampires are supposed to be seductive, not gag-inducing. I'd rather them sparkle instead of this. Gabriel is a hulking mass of... something, but you can tell they didn't make him THAT ugly on purpose. Although the graphics were pretty impressive in places (mostly outside areas), so much of the game looked drab and uninteresting. That's not very Castlevania-like. Even in the games with the most graphical limitations, there were interesting backgrounds and character designs. Some of this stuff would be okay in other series, but why change things so drastically and expect fans to not care or notice?

Let me sum things up by stating this: There is a female creature you can summon in Lords of Shadow, who has very visible bare breasts during her little summon animation. I skipped it almost every time I used it. Yes, that's right, this game can even make titties disappointing.

I could go on and on, but the fact is, this is the first game in a very long time that I've gotten rid of. I've traded it away on Goozex, hopefully in exchange for something I like better. I didn't finish the game, but I think I got halfway or 3/4 of the way through it? More than enough to know it wasn't for me. And although I was thinking of changing PSN IDs for a while anyway, the fact that I did means this game's trophies won't show up on the new one. That's... pretty bad, you guys. I mean, I even liked that Wii Castlevania fighting game a little bit.

That's the big one, but here's some quickie other disappointments of 2010!

Record of Agarest War: So you mean I have to endure a ridiculous amount of forced battles and do everything perfectly, and then I MIGHT see a girl's ankles or something? This might work out if internet porn or real girls didn't exist. I think I'm going to ban Idea Factory from the household.

Final Fantasy XIII: I basically went over this in the comments of my last entry. It's way too linear for its own good, the end.