Affectionate Diary

Eurogamer: How do you keep the Pokemon games fresh and relevant in the rapidly changing videogame market?

Junichi Masuda: When I create new videogames, I consider not just adapting the last element. First, I look again at all the elements, because the environment has changed. For example, there have been some technology changes and advancements. People may not like what they like in the past, trend wise. I take that into consideration when creating a new Pokemon.

Eurogamer: With this version, what makes it feel fresh? What makes it different to what’s gone before?

Junichi Masuda: We employed the same strategy as we did with Red and Blue.

FUCK YEAH. The Rift dev says his MMO is so powerful, if you put that cock sucker on your console, it’ll blow the fuck up!

Man! This guy is like Cliffy B on steroids and drugs AT THE SAME TIME. He makes Cliffy B’s checkered shirts look like mother fucking ballerina clothes, yo! Which is just as well, those shirts are pretty much over.

Any judgement on a group of people whose main defining characteristic is the country they’re from is a racist judgement. Or possibly a xenophobic judgement, though the difference is academic. I’m fine with that in principle, because I’m basically a racist. Everyone is, that’s human nature. But you can’t fault the wisdom of Inaba of Platinum Games when he says:

“My personal opinion is that it’s not very meaningful to segment the industry into Japanese and American,” Inaba told Play. “Wherever you go there are two kinds of game developers. One is good developers who have brilliant ideas and passion and the means and the resources to make their ideas into games. The other is bad studios who are not as good at what they do and those studios will be naturally selected to fail.”

Amen, brother.

Obviously he’d be much less open-minded if people still rated Japanese developers.

I love mentals. They’re interesting, and for me that’s the most important thing. I have enough good people in my life, I have great friends and a loving family. I don’t need any more good people, and I definitely don’t need any more boring people. So any time I come across new mentalists, I get excited. Hi Dark Energy Digital!

Let’s take a look at some proper fucking mental in action:

Eurogamer: “Why is the update called Pure?”

Pete Jones: “We called it Pure because it was closest to our original vision for the game. It encapsulates what we wanted to create.”

Cool! How did they do that?

Pete Jones: “We looked through over 250 reviews. Believe it or not, there have been nearly 250 reviews. And we have read and dissected every single bloody one of them. And most of the blogs, well, all the blogs we could find, and all of the comments that were posted.”

Hmmm, is that your vision if you go to other people for advice?

Pete Jones: “It’s clear that a number of people loved the game and a number of people were really frustrated by the game. In Hydrophobia Pure we believe we’ve eliminated those frustrations, and therefore it is a pure version of our vision.”

Of course, the only way to ensure you deliver the purest possible version of your vision is to garner feedback hundreds of sources and then incorporate that feedback into your product. Absolute purity. What else did they say?

Pete Jones: “We looked at the fact that you could get lost very easily within the game. We were thinking of it being an immersive experience, but actually for a lot of players that could be really frustrating.”

Hmm, I’m not sure about this. I mean, getting lost actually *IS* really immersive in some games. Hampton Court Maze Simulator is one such game. Is their game about getting lost? No! Perhaps they don’t really understand the meaning of immersive.

Pete Jones: “I’m reading from Eurogamer’s review, actually. You put, ‘Its cumulative small failings drags the player down into infuriation.’ It’s all those small failings, as you put them, that we’ve addressed.”

“as you’ve put them”

And they dropped the price to 800pts. Here’s what they had to say on the original 1200pts price:

Deborah Jones: “It’s not our pricing structure. It’s Microsoft’s pricing structure and it’s not our decision at the end of the day. It has to fit in with Microsoft’s vision. It was Microsoft’s vision to have it at 1200 Points, well joint vision, really.”

HAHAHAHAHA!

Deborah Jones: “If you ask us, would we have liked to have had this title update out at launch, the answer is obviously yes, but we didn’t know at that point. In hindsight it would have been a wonderful thing to have had done all these things initially.”

Right, seriously. What is the point of this statement? It’s so mental I have literally no idea what kind of mind can have produced these words. Are they saying they would have liked to garner feedback and advice from hundreds of games journalists before release and then, on release, put out a better version of the game they made? That doesn’t seem feasible, but I really can’t work out any other alternative.

Then they summarise that they’ve listened to the their community, their game wasn’t that bad to begin with and that more people should listen to their community.

Fair play, though. They stuck it out and tried to fix their abortion of a game. And I hope it succeeds, because I want to hear more from them. Not in terms of a new game, obviously. I just want them to keep talking, because they are TOTALLY FUCKING MENTAL. And I like that.

Unless, of course, you think that being called gay is a slur. And even then, don’t apologise or everyone will know you hate guys that suck dick.

According to Official PlayStation Mag, Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari Damacy, recently said this:

“At E3 I saw people putting on speeches but I thought the future seemed a bit dark. The 3D games didn’t spark my interest. I think motion control’s a bit old now, I don’t think those games are the future. It all seemed a bit dull.”

The ludicrous dev also said:

“It’d be good if we could go back to the PS2 era. Instead of spending lots of effort developing technology, I think ideas are the most important thing.”

Yeah, and coming up with them is your fucking job. Console manufacturers are SUPPOSED to be focussed on technology. Jesus Christ. Do your fucking job and we’ll have new ideas. Which, by the way, can work on powerful machines as well as old skool tech. And obviously you wanting to leave the industry is nothing to do with the muted reception to Noby Noby Boy. Everyone not treating you like a messiah now? Aw, that’s a shame.

According to the dev team’s interview in 360 this month it’s what they’ve been “really focusing on with this one”. Their wording suggests it’s been a higher priority than the total destruction of the environment. Which I find equal parts worrying and hard to believe. Anyway -

“a year before Guerilla came out, we started working on this story.”

Which is a little bit like me saying I’m going to feed you an amazing steak, and you know it’ll taste good because I’ve been cooking it for over an hour.

What twisted mind thought up this genius idea? A game on the Wii in which you do Karate! Let’s look at the press release -

“the game offers a true full-body experience”
“players will execute and master various karate moves utilizing the Wii Remote™ and Nunchuk, or two Wii Remotes”

How will that work, then? Will you strap one to a leg and one to an arm? Even then, that’s just half your body (counting only limbs and not your hips or shoulders, parts that must be moved precisely with any striking technique).

I can’t wait to ‘play’ this ‘game’!

I mean I’d rather have that VD test where they scrape skin away from the inside of your willy.

From a conversation on MSN about Affectionate Diary -

“It’s enthusiastic, coherent writing with a clear editorial voice.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!

Coherent! That’ll keep me going for some time.

I love it when people try to write about things they don’t really understand. Let’s look at some examples of people trying to write ‘above their station’, if you’ll excuse the terminology. And let’s use Bayonetta as an example, because most 16-year-old critics have attempted to go to town on this one in the way a child tries to go town on a picture of a fire engine and then just ends up throwing red paint all over the walls shouting “weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” and there’s not a single fucking fire engine in sight. And the kid’s pants are covered in shit and piss and they don’t even know it.

TVG - “the allusions to sadomasochism are part of a much more complex and subtle ballet in the game’s design”

I must have missed that.

“if you’re a real glutton for punishment, then you may as well play through the whole campaign”

They did actually like it, though.

Team Xbox - “Swinging from pseudo-philosophical analyses of Heaven and Hell to dolly and crane shots of cleavage and asses, it is perhaps the most objectifying and demeaning imagery in a mainstream game this generation.”

Whatever. They also spent the whole fucking article moaning about how shit they are at the game. Here they are commenting on the lack of impact each health power-up has -

“This feels indicative of a common thread in the game, that of a difficult time finding an identity.”

And then - “Bayonetta is difficult to evaluate critically in ways that only games are: Should I judge it for the hours of fun I had and its frequent brilliance”

YES.

And finally -

“While for the most part Bayonetta takes liberally from character action titles that have come before”.

Would those be the games that the Bayonetta team made, or the games that other people made that copied all of their ideas in the first place? YOU FUCKING MUG.

Play.tm - “a pitiful two-button combo system”.

You know you can use dodge in combos, right? And shoot? That’s four buttons. Just saying!

And also - “points to a worrying lack of innovation on the part of developer PlatinumGames”.

I mean, sure, all they’re doing is flexing the template they created and everyone else got wrong. I’ll give you that. There’s no innovation in game structure there. The innovation is purely in presentation and artistic direction. I guess all music isn’t innovative, because it’s just the same instruments. And only Avatar is innovative in the cinema, the rest of films are just 2D. I mean apart from all the other 3D films. I suppose if you were reviewing a rainbow you’d have to mention that there’d been thousands that come before, and they were all basically the same.

“At first viewing, Bayonetta really isn’t very good at all.”

Don’t fucking make me come over there. I will kick your stupid fucking ass into your face.

“those willing to look closer by pushing through a mundane and mediocre first hour”

NNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggggggggggg.

“the simplistic attack system is a control masterstroke offering astounding variety and versatility”

Ok, ok, I’m calming down a bit. I’m still fucking having you, though.

“An unrivalled showcase of imagination and creativity, Bayonetta is potentially 2010’s game of the year before 2009 has even ended.”

Ah, we were playing the same game after all, you backtracking bunch of monkeys! I didn’t really understand the 2010/2009 comment, but I’ll presume that’s because I’m stupid. You must be more intelligent because all of your sentences are really long, ponderous and full of flowery fucking nonsense words that I’d normally only see in a GCSE-level short story.

1UP - “She’s an abnormally skinny witch with an abnormally large ass”.

Not so much stupid as wrong. Come on! Her ass is perfect! On the off chance this statement is correct I’ll spend a few hours tonight checking it out.

Planet Xbox 360 - “The panoptic online reception”

This one’s going to be good!

“Encounters are an amuse-bouche of isolated groups of enemies”

Shit, he might just be more intelligent than me. I should probably Google that to see what he means.

“If immersion is a bullet, Bayonetta never reloads.”

Shit! I fucking love that quote. In fact, here’s the link - http://www.planetxbox360.com/article_9170/Bayonetta_-_Review

James Anaipakos I salute you. You have, however, totally fucked up this post. Fortunately, Giant Bomb is here to save the day -

“There’s a permeating hypersexuality here that could be derided as being deeply misogynistic just as easily as it could be hailed as a beacon of post-feminist self-actualization”

Thanks for that, Giant Bomb! What else do you have to say on the matter?

“the absurdity in Bayonetta is so bone-deep that it doesn’t really matter one way or another.”

YEAH, I FUCKING THOUGHT SO.

“it’s possible for just about anything to happen, and in Bayonetta, it usually does.”

Surely… I mean…. nah, there’s no way you just…

“it kind of emphasizes just how Japanese this game is”

Racist.

Ace Gamez - “It’s the kind of game that makes God of War’s Kratos look like a soft touch and it’s not every day you hear someone saying that.”

Indeed.

“Everything is overblown, exuding the kind of testosterone you get in a typical Cliffy B interview, yet re-calibrated with a kickass x-chromosome”

Good ol’ Cliffy B! Of course, he’s asked for us to refer to him using his full name from now on, because he’s a serious developer. That’s why Gears of War 2 was 18-rated. He’s GROWN UP.

Spong - “a perplexing mix of pure button-mashology”

I can’t decide if this is good or bad. It definitely means they can’t play games, though.

“to be honest, these guys are pussies”

Have they been reading Affectionate Diary?

“there is nothing wrong with grown men getting a perv on”

They have!

Just Push Start - “Bayonetta is one hot, sexy mama. Her portrayal in the game can be considered as slutty, but she has killer moves that will make you wet your pants.”

I would change the “but” to “and”, but that’s just me.

“Just because this is an action game, doesn’t mean you can just push one button and finish the game.”

I hate those kinds of action games! The ones in which you just push one button and then it’s over! They’re such a rip off. They should at least say on the box that the playing time is three seconds. I mean, I’m paying good money for my games!

“With Bayonetta, you can do a lot of hits in the enemy by combining the gun, kick, and punch buttons.”

Oh right, I see. Sorry, I wasn’t being fair. I didn’t realise this review was being written by somebody whose first, or even second, language isn’t even English. That probably makes sense in Kanji.

“voice over’s”

That one was just for Boss Nonnu.

“Her sexy look will not only attract male gamers, but she will make you fall in love with her personality.”

To be fair, that’s pretty accurate.

And finally, let’s finish with something spectacular. Here is Burn360’s finest moment -

“if you liked the heart pumping action sequences of Modern Warfare 2 campaign you will love Bayonetta”

Thank you for playing.