Minecraft and Tekkit
Had a LAN night with a friend on the weekend, and we played some Minecraft survival. While playing, we talked a lot about our first experiences in the game. He brought up that he had noticed a lot of people felt the people working on Minecraft had "ruined the game". Having had a few days to think about it, there is some truth to that from my point of view. Minecraft was always about building incredible things for me, not finding dungeons and killing mobs. Those experiences came from trying to get materials to build my incredible things. Redstone, pistons and rails gave me near endless enjoyment. The enchanting and "The End" never really made sense to me. The game certainly isn't ruined however, as you can completely ignore those parts of the game if you wish, but I can't help but wonder if it was the direction Notch had intended to take Minecraft.
Tekkit on the other hand, is exactly what I love about the Minecraft style of game. Building crazy machine setups, coming up with solutions to problems that you face and nuclear freaking reactors. Sign me up for more of that.
Saints Row IV... again
Sigh... so in the last Random Ramblings I pointed out that Saints Row IV seems to be well on its way to being the most controversial Aussie release of 2013. Since then, it's been banned... again. That document simply says it was banned due to real drugs being depicted as rewards and incentives. Yet again the Australian Classification Review Board shows just how little they understand video gamers. We aren't children. I'm 24 and most of my gaming friends are in their twenties, although I have a few who are older than that. We are responsible adults who make informed choices about our entertainment.
The whole point of having a restricted rating is to prevent children from accessing the material. These games are no longer to be aimed at children. So, if I can watch someone get killed by someone who is under the influence of drugs on television (I'm looking at you Underbelly), why is it that I cannot play a game that is decidedly tongue in cheek? Because the game has "alien narcotics"? That's as hypocritical as you can get there ACRB. Not that I should be surprised.
EDIT: So it seems that the aforementioned Low Violence Version of SR4 is still up on Steam. I'll keep you posted on what has changed as I find information on it. Also GTA5 has passed the ACRB... hypocritical as it seems, the drug use in the game has been deemed ok.
EDIT 2: The low violence version has passed, with the mission containing the alien narcotics taken out. The downside to this is that SR4 cannot be played in co-op with anyone outside of Australia. Oh well, good with the bad I guess.
The whole point of having a restricted rating is to prevent children from accessing the material. These games are no longer to be aimed at children. So, if I can watch someone get killed by someone who is under the influence of drugs on television (I'm looking at you Underbelly), why is it that I cannot play a game that is decidedly tongue in cheek? Because the game has "alien narcotics"? That's as hypocritical as you can get there ACRB. Not that I should be surprised.
EDIT: So it seems that the aforementioned Low Violence Version of SR4 is still up on Steam. I'll keep you posted on what has changed as I find information on it. Also GTA5 has passed the ACRB... hypocritical as it seems, the drug use in the game has been deemed ok.
EDIT 2: The low violence version has passed, with the mission containing the alien narcotics taken out. The downside to this is that SR4 cannot be played in co-op with anyone outside of Australia. Oh well, good with the bad I guess.
The Mighty Quest for Failed Monetization
On to happier news, Ubisoft, the developer of The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, have announced that a whole bunch of changes to the in game store will be rolled back. What was the issue? Essentially any item in the game could be bought for either the in game currency gold, or Blings purchased for real money. How did this affect the game? In TMQfEP you build your own dungeon that can be raided by other players, and then you can go and raid another players dungeon. If someone with a lot of real world cash wanted, they could simply buy the best items for their dungeon, skewing the power of the game to those who were willing to drop real world money (the very definition of Pay to Win). Many complaints were made, with a major part being played by this video by TotalBiscuit. All in all, at least Ubisoft knows when to stop fighting a losing battle.
And that's all this week folks. As always:
GAME ON!
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