Plans, Plans, Plans ...

It is early August of 2015, and I've got little to offer in the way of reviews, unfortunately. Journalistic outlets of various standings are jumping the gun, and requesting review copies early. Most of the time I'm left wanting in said cases. I've even run into the problem of finding a proper contact in some instances. I know that sounds like a bunch of excuses to not provide for my dedicated readers, but it is what it is. What I do have planned for this week is a basic review of the upcoming free-to-play PS4 MOBA, "Trans-Galactic Tournament". After having sampled the last supposedly "Free-To-Play" MOBA I have my doubts about the sincerity of the free-to-play model though. I will spend some proper time with it learning the controls, and feature functions to give you a breakdown of how user-friendly it really is. From the preview trailer I can say that it looks visually promising, and definitely more action oriented than the previous PS4 MOBA flop. Sony definitely needs to provide a proper MOBA experience as that is a rising genre in competitive gaming, and with Microsoft having the rights to "Smite" they really need to impress the genre fans with this new game. I'm still holding out hope for a worthwhile free-to-play experience on the PS4, something akin to what "Destiny of Spirits" had to offer. A true free-to-play gaming experience. While such a thing might dip into Sony's pocket if they were to offer something of a "Triple A" nature in the free-to-play format they could possibly make up for the loss, and earn a profit with more console, and gaming peripheral sales. That's "Big Business 101", my friends. Take a hit to impress, and it could lead you to fame, and fortune.

Phantom Breaker Battlegrounds Overdrive (PS4)

Back in early April of 2013 Mages, and their publisher 5pb released onto the Xbox 360 XBLA library a substitute game for a planned Phantom Breaker 2D fighter. This unsuspected yet brilliantly delivered anime beat 'em up that was "Phantom Breaker Battlegrounds" ended up surprising even me. It turned out to be a game that incorporated deeply involved fighting game elements into a "Streets of Rage" style brawler. It could be played solo, or in the company of friends as a co-op, or competitive game making it all the more intriguing. There was both local, and network play included in the affordable retail cost. The art style that accompanied said gaming experience was of a cutesy chibi-anime design, and was done up in a way that utilized pixels for character builds. One might think that such an odd combination of features would screw with the game's intended quality, but in the end it was the perfect genre blend. When 5pb announced the release of an upgraded version of the same game for the PS4 earlier this year I was once again excited to take that trip down memory lane, and see what changes, if any had taken hold of the original experience. To my dismay I did not notice any real changes other than the inclusion of a former DLC character, and some possible tweaks to the character management system, and modes. Regardless of these possible basic improvements, and the lack of truly new content I still had a blast playing through the game. It definitely lived up to the asking price, and it's former glory.

Youtube Culture, Gaming, and the Entertainment Industry

Diving right in ... I've noticed, since my own Youtube channel's debut in 2008 that things slowly but surely began to effect various things in the world of social media, and entertainment. Youtube started on a harmless note with comedic videos, and videos of the homemade sort meant to entertain those newcomers who would dare invest time out of their day to view what the content provider had to offer. Eventually when money making aspects reared their ugly head alongside other harmful trends Youtube, and the accompanying social media outlets took the internet invention on a downhill spiral that it will likely never recover from. Everyone, and their mother was out to get their time in the spotlight. Everyone was looking to make the big bucks even if it meant forsaking their morals as entertainment enthusiasts. Things like "Trolling", and "Griefing" became popular. As sexist as it may sound sexy gamers also became a popular thing. To this day there are tons of copycat channels providing like-minded content of the worst sort to their subscriber fan base in hopes of reaping that PewDiePie fame, and fortune. Let's jump aboard that trend train kiddies! Choo! Choo! ...

Weekend Blog Log (July 26, 2015)

For those of you who have followed me this past week on Twitter you'll know that I had a sort of emotional meltdown. For the first time in a long time I had hit rock bottom in my life, and openly so. I think it was a combination of things building up to that point, and not particularly one simple thing. My life is chaos. I endure family drama on a daily basis, and life in general has begun to collapse around me. When a certain friend started making judgmental tweets indirectly about something I had tweeted earlier it sent me even further over the deep end. I felt bad for having lost her friendship, but at the same time knew the ties must be broken. What you have to understand is that I go to Twitter for an escape. Each time I log in I look forward to the positive things my friends have to say whether it's game related, or whatever. For a long time gaming had been that escape for me, but with the quality of online gaming, and gaming in general going downhill I can no longer depend on that hobby to brighten my day. Twitter has once again become my last hope at happiness. Even that is suffering from drama though.

Destiny - "A Reflection, A Farewell"

This morning, out of sheer curiosity I logged into to Destiny on the PS4 just to see what Xur was selling. It's like a bad habit now. Regardless of the nature of this routine addiction I played through two weekly heroics with my Hunter, and Titan to get the strange coins I needed to buy whatever it was that Xur had in stock. The weekly heroic playthroughs went by fairly quickly, and smoothly on the level 32 difficulty setting, mostly thanks to void burn damage. As usual I was rewarded with 9 strange coins in each playthrough, and went to spend said tokens on Xur's stash. I should also note that someone at Bungie gifted my Titan 9 extra strange coins, possibly because I complained about the state of Destiny this morning. It didn't say it was from Bungie, but the tagline "gift from an unknown benefactor" pretty much stated the obvious. When I finally found Xur near the 'New Monarchy" vendor in the Tower (At the large sealed door) I discovered that he was peddling the same damn crap he always does. It's SSDD at it's worst. Regardless I nabbed some exotic chest armor for my Titan, and a pair of exotic gauntlets for my Hunter. Both of which will not likely be of any use for my preferred play style. As I went about my morning Destiny biz doing all of this some thoughts came to mind. Particularly about the current state of the game, and what it used to mean to me ...