Pixel Perfect

When Street Fighter V launched 2 years ago, it brought some significant differences from other titles in the series, some bad, but others good. Today, I’d like to talk about one of the best changes that Capcom made to Street Fighter, and why greedy players may ruin it for the rest of us. Welcome to Lgndary Thoughts!

As I am sure all of you know, almost every single fighting game released these days has additional characters added after launch in the form of paid DLC. A practice which I am all for, and believe to be fair. New playable characters cost money to make, so I am more than happy to pay money to play them. This is a standard practice, and I believe most people have no problem with it. But instead of simply towing the line, Capcom decided to mix things up a bit with Street Fighter V, and give players another option.

In an attempt to keep the player base active, Capcom made it possible for Street Fighter V players to buy additional DLC characters without spending real money. Instead, players can buy them with what they call fight money, which can be earned by winning matches or completing other in-game challenges. Yes, using real money is another option, but those that can’t afford to buy their favorite character can simply earn them for free.

And yes, earning enough fight money for a character can be a grind. But the point is that it is an option that Capcom had no obligation to give. No other fighting game allows players to earn DLC characters by simply playing the game. The latest Super Smash Bros. didn't, Tekken 7 doesn’t, and even the newly released Dragon Ball FighterZ doesn’t. And no one complained about that either. Again, most people believe paying for extra DLC characters is a fair practice, because it is. 

But in the past few weeks I have seen some fans exhibit an attitude that I find to be incredibly greedy, and short-sighted. They feel that the work it takes to earn characters for free is too much, and that Capcom should give players more fight money for completing certain tasks. For them, it isn’t enough that Capcom offers players a way to get characters for free, they want it to be easy as well. They are forgetting that essentially every other fighting game in the world don’t even have a free option, let alone one where the characters are practically given away.

To be honest, I believe it is getting to the point where I think Capcom made a mistake in letting players earn characters for free. Not only are they giving up money that they would get from players actually paying for the DLC, but they get attacked by making it too much of a grind too? Meanwhile, other fighting games are coming out with DLC that requires a cash payment, and they are receiving nothing but praise? Capcom has got to be incredibly confused, because I know that I am.

This is a perfect example of gamers being given an inch, and wanting a mile. I don’t like to use this word very often, but this is as clear cut a case of entitlement as I have ever seen. And I can only hope that players knock it off before Capcom realizes that they should never have given a free option in the first place, and exclusively took cash as payment for their DLC.

Happy Friday everyone! We’ve had quite a week, and it isn’t even over yet since PSX is just getting started! Speaking of PSX, however, I won’t be writing about it. At least not today. Sony has been pulling in expectations and isn’t even calling their stream tonight a Keynote. Instead, let’s discuss the livestream that took place last night. The Game Awards. Welcome to Lgndary Thoughts!

I gotta say, this year’s Game Awards was easily the best there has ever been. There were a couple of awkward moments, sure, but nothing too bad, and they were all overshadowed by the excellent show. Amazing reveals, the live orchestra, and even a few touching and fun moments made for an exciting and enjoyable show.

Moving on to the announcements, I gotta start with Death Stranding. That trailer has to be one of the most incredible, insane videos I have ever seen. Out of context, it is hard to pull any logic out of it, but that doesn’t cut into my interest in the slightest. Who are these people? What are the otherworldly creatures? What are the devices on their shoulders? Why is the baby so important? Why is dying from self-inflicted stab wounds better than being taken by the creatures? The only thing that was disappointing about it was the absence of a “Coming 2018” at the end. I know it was always unlikely this would launch next year, but I had hope.

After that, I can’t help but say that the remaining biggest reveals had to go to Nintendo. Breath of the Wild DLC release, and Bayonetta 3 have me so incredibly pumped. It was also nice to see the best game of the year going home with the Game of the Year award!

Other than that, there isn’t much to say other than well job to the team who put the show together. I feel like, for the first time, The Game Awards had the announcements, and the significance to tackle E3.

That’s all from me folks! I’ll be sure to post any news that comes out of PSX this weekend. And if you see anything that hasn’t been posted yet, please shoot me a message! Other than that, have a good weekend everyone!

Happy Friday everyone! I hope everyone had a good week, even though news was a little bit slower compared to last week. That is expected though considering we had two big gaming events in the past seven days. Speaking of those events, I’d like to talk about Sony’s show, and why it paled in comparison to previous years. Welcome to Lgndary Thoughts!

A week ago today, Sony held their 4th annual Playstation Experience event. The format of the show was very different from what we have seen in the past, and unfortunately, served to create their weakest show ever. The reason Sony opted to not have a real keynote is pretty obvious; they had nothing to announce. Or almost nothing, at least. Yes they did show a new trailer or two, and the Medievil announcement was a very pleasant surprise. But the show still felt incredibly lacking, especially when it comes to previous years.

But the lack of announcements wasn’t my only issue with the show. For starters, a lot of the discussion that happened with the onstage developers was difficult to watch. To be more specific, there was an almost pompous air to everything they said. I honestly couldn’t help but roll my eyes when someone referred to 2017 as “The Year of Horizon: Zero Dawn”. I understand that this is a Sony show, but that doesn’t mean modesty should be thrown out the window.

I also had issue with the live demo of Detroit: Become Human. While I actually really enjoyed the gameplay shown, the way they went about the live demo was a little frustrating. Instead of just playing the game, they decided to involve the audience, and have them help make decisions in the game. This is a neat idea that would have been fun to experience, but they had no real way of including the crowd. Instead, the crowd would just shout what they wanted the player to do. And as you may have guessed, this resulted in an unintelligible noise that in no way could ever have even hinted at what most people, or anyone for that matter, wanted the player to choose.

But like I said, this format was due to the fact that Sony didn’t have as much up their sleeve as previous years. And that is understandable, but it was also avoidable. To me, The Playstation Experience should be one of, if not Sony’s biggest show of the year. Especially considering some people actually pay to be there. So in my humble opinion, they should have held back a lot of the announcements made in Paris, and saved them for last week.

What did you think of the show? I’m sure there are some people that enjoyed it, but did you prefer it over their normal format? Be sure to let me know in the comments below!

Happy Friday everyone! This week I am yet again going to be talking about Street Fighter (I know, I know, I’m sorry). I had planned to write about another topic, but it wasn’t ready in time, so I had to substitute this one in. It is a Thought that I had planned to write for awhile now anyways, so I hope nobody minds.

The last time I wrote about Street Fighter V, I talked about how the game lets people purchase characters by just playing the game. And how some players were insisting on Capcom giving them more despite the fact that every other fighting game required money for DLC. But today, I am going to talk about how Capcom saved the game from a bare-bones mess, into what it is today. Welcome to Lgndary Thoughts!

Street Fighter V originally launched 2 years ago. Capcom held several beta tests that allowed players to try out the game, and many were very happy with what they saw. The visuals were great, the gameplay was excellent, and the fighters looked awesome. There were some technical issues that needed to be worked out, but most people thought the game was really shaping up to be a great improvement over Street Fighter IV. On top of the excellent gameplay, Capcom had also announced a  shift in their policy regarding updates and DLC. Unlike SFIV, players would have the option of buying characters simply by playing. In addition to that, Capcom also promised players that they would never have to pay for a Street Fighter IV to Super Street Fighter IV style update again. Needless to say, fans of the series were pumped.

That is, until the game launched.

Upon its release, buyers of Street Fighter V couldn’t help but notice the glaring lack of what had been standard features of past iterations. Most notably was an arcade mode. A VS CPU mode was also missing, amongst some other, smaller things. So to put in plainly, while the core of the game was great, it was incomplete.

Naturally, sales of Street Fighter V did not meet expectations, and was being outsold by other fighting games in tremendously less time. Even when Capcom added a cinematic story mode, and made many other improvements, the game could not shake the perception of being bad or a waste of money. It started to feel like no matter what Capcom did to the game, the perception of what it used to be would continue to hold it back. It wouldn’t be enough to add an arcade mode, or VS CPU mode, or anything else. They needed something bigger.

Enter Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition. A brand new version of the game that redesigned the menus, added new play styles for characters, added not just 1, but 5 arcade modes, just to name a few of the new features. And to top it all off, this entire version of the game was 100% free to all existing owners of Street Fighter V.

With one release, Capcom generated a ton of hype around their game, fixed almost all of the problems the original release had, kept those that already bought the game happy by giving them free content, and destroying any perception that the game was unfinished. It took them 2 years to do it, but Street Fighter V is finally the game it should have been all along, and more. When faced with criticism, Capcom didn’t walk away from the game, or try to defend it, they actually worked hard to listen to the fans, and delivered. That is how you save a game, and other developers in similar situations would be wise to take notice.

Much to my dismay, Paris Games Week came and went without a peep from Media Molecule about their upcoming game, Dreams. But hope is not lost! After said event, they were kind enough to inform us all that Dreams will be making a return at this year’s Playstation Experience. Welcome to Lgndary Thoughts!

Dreams was one of the first games announced at the very same event that the Playstation 4 was announced at. It wasn’t titled at the time, and was mostly an unclear concept. Media Molecule showcased a very interesting piece of software, but it was hard to see how they would turn it into a video game. Now, almost 5 years since originally announced, it is still unclear if Dreams is simply a way for players to create things, or if will be a true game with actual gameplay.

We won’t find out until next month, but we can speculate until then. Looking to Media Molecule’s past, I think we may be able to glimpse what their future may be. Their very first title, LittleBigPlanet, was also a video game that focused largely on the ability for anyone to be able to create their very own levels. The tagline was even “Play, Create, Share”. But at it’s core, players weren’t creating at all. They were playing a platformer. To be more clear, when actually playing through the story of LittleBigPlanet, there was absolutely no creation going on. It was just another (great) platformer. The creation side was completely optional, and in a completely different mode of the game.

So why does Dreams have to incorporate everything we’ve seen so far into actual gameplay? I don’t believe it does. It seems to me that after the side scrolling platforms that LittleBigPlanet was, the next obvious evolution would be a 3D platformer. Dreams could feature its own unique story, with interesting platformer elements, with the ability to create your own levels on the side.

That is just one idea, but it’s the only one I can think of that makes sense. But then again, I’m no developer. But whatever Media Molecule is cooking up with Dreams, it’s been almost two years since they have shown anything. So the possibilities are almost endless. Luckily, we only have to wait a month to see exactly what Dreams has turned into.