THE VENT: METAL GEAR SOLID V STANKS!

I like to think I'm a reasonable person who has just experienced some very unreasonable things. Thank the good lord i was not out in public when this game ended,  I probably would have had a full blown adult tantrum. I realize that this tirade is not going to be respectful or in any kind of good taste and I don't care.

I grew up with Metal Gear and have been a dedicated fan despite the numerous shortcomings of the series. I had a lot of fun playing MGS:V, everything was fine up until the end that is. Somehow all the sloppy supplemental dog shit of the series ended upright in my lap as I watched the credits roll yesterday.

The VENT is a special place. It will allow us to spew negative mental annotations off the record with no regard for any ones feelings. A huge portion of criticisms tend to be unconsciously edited; trading off a negative trait for a positive one. Well here its all con baby! Here we don't give a fuck. 
What follows is a unabashedly annoyed gamers thoughts on MGS:V:

Fuck the repeat main missions. I can't be  the only one amazed by this insulting mechanic. I didn't buy a game to play the same main missions including cut scenes 3 times over, and this happened with maybe 5 of the main missions, which, if my math serves creates at least 10 useless missions that I could have simply chosen to replay with a different approach. The side ops are even worse. Every time i rescued a prisoner it would just spam it again and add the same fucking mission back onto the god damn list of shit i had already completed with a check mark beside it. So fuck that. Also fuck that replay of the intro at the end of the game again. The fuck was that about!?

Fuck Konami for pulling funding on a triple a title mid development. Of course the root problem of most things is money and this Konami/ Kojima situation is no exception. What the fuck did you think was going to happen Konami?

"Kojima! You've gone over budget, and were really only into pachinko now and shit people can insert money into. So your done here. Unless we can find a way to insert money into your butthole and get a 200% cash return on the investment your finished here.We don't care if your games 'almost' done we'll make assloads of cash from the name alone not to mention the pre-orders and make sure all the reviews that come out will be 10's somehow. BWWWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA."

                                                                                                                                - Everyone at Konami

Fuck anyone who thinks this game is a perfect 10. Also fuck numerical scores in general. Based on nothing really. But shit people like to see numbers instead of reading so let's just do that. Aren't reviews suppose to be a well rounded broad picture? Grading all aspects of a game experience? And if so how could you give an incomplete story 10? If the rest of the game was amazing,  but the story is something a drunk handicapped parrot could have told you and you felt generous and gave it a 9. The average is NOT 10. So fuck those reviews. The more i think about it the more i think the parasite in the game activated when anyone installed MGS:V and caused them to only give perfect 10's.

Fuck the boss fights. Everyone knows metal gear bosses are awesome. Kojima really phoned it in this time. The man on fires weakness is.....wait for it....waaaait.....water!! Omg of course? And washe Volgin from Metal Gear 3?  And was that baby psycho mantis? Guess we'll never know. How did they both work together? were they actual people or apparitions?  The fucking skulls are stupid. They were not fun to encounter at all.  Many of us had no idea how to deal with them. And who were they? If I knew what or who they were I might have been more invested in the mummers farce that was the 'battles'.Yes plural. You fight them many many times over. And what's with the unexplained woman skulls unit? And why the fuck were they still after me when Skull face died? And why didn't I get to fight skull face? I compulsively thought on Metal Gear 3 and how much fun all the boss fights were and how smart i felt after beating most of them. Especially The Sorrow. That game was, in my opinion, the pinnacle of the series.

Fuck Kojima for being a bad storyteller. I know the entire game is a kind of farce or goofy anime but come on dude. I feel like ive been trained to think being confused by a story is normal The joke i'm starting to understand now is that even with an incomplete mess of a plot MGS:V  still ended about as well as all the others. He's clearly started eating crayons and throwing his sippy cup across the room when its empty, grow up dude.

Fuck Quiets character. A naked woman who doesn't talk!? That's dumb and juvenile, she could have been slightly more dressed which would have made me take her a bit more seriously but it's kind of hard to to learn about a character that says zero things. There were explanations about why she couldn't wear clothes...or talk. Something about speaking the English language would give her a virus and she absorbs shit through her skin instead of eating or whatever.  

Fuck no David Hayter. He IS snake. Why would you spend way more money on an actor that has 5 pages of dialogue in an entire game that sounds like every other male character in the game? He must have cost millions of dollars to aquire, no wonder they went over budget. How many people bought the game because; Jack Bauer?

I'm running out of fucks to give here. Only a few left. So fuck the ending! As a gamer I don't care if your company shut down your product. You don't get a sympathy 10 from me because I know it was hard for you. Your grown ass men and you released a very incomplete game. So who was cypher exactly? Where did the metal gear go? Why was Huey such a fucking stupid bitch of a character? So I'm not me in the game? And no chapter 3? You know like every story ever has 3 parts. Konami's all like: 'nah bro. 1 big chapter and a second small one that makes zero sense is what we're about now.'

You know what, fuck me for writing this garbage. I guess I just boiled over after the game, no, the series ended on the worst note ever. In fact. I don't think I've been more annoyed with such an otherwise polished entertainment experience ever.

We encourage comments in the VENT. Insult something! it feels good. 

CHOOSE WISELY

Clearly, with games as large and involved as they are now, us older folks must pick and choose what to play and when- very carefully or else end up with an incredible museum of untouched Relics. Unfortunately, the idealist in most of us is merely a high pitched 'urkelish'  voice that we stamp out so we can continue purchasing games well never-ever finish. Have any of you ever played a game for 10 minutes just because you bought it and, maybe, feel guilty for not ever experiencing someone else's hard work that you paid for?

These choices can become strangely overwhelming. Buying the thing is the easy part. Getting excited about playing them is also the easy part. Scheduling in the time is the quasi challenging adulty part i don't think ill ever fully master.  But choosing something from the expanding library, well, it can be a bit of a motherfucker. Just the other night i had a half bottle of Whisky and some designated game time. I was ready to zone out and play something for a few hours. That didn't happen. In fact not much happened at all. I got the 'fear' you see. The enormous amount of choice before me caused a mental 'GAME OVER' for me before i even picked something out to play. Distantly i  swear i heard a slide whistle being slowly drawn out foir me and my sad attempt. I went through the backlog out loud. By myself. Which i seem to do often now.

This would not make me a happy man

In this case, on this particular evening i chose non-wisely.

"Metal Gear!?- Yeah, i'm only 10 main missions in. I should catch up a bit..Quiets boobs are awesome. WTF was Kojima thinking?...maybe..."

"Witcher 3?!- SURE! wait....where was i? I'm only 25 hrs in, i should really put in some time here. Nurture it a bit. Give it some attention But then ill run out of money or my sword will break or ill get distracted and start doing shit in the forest.......aw fuck it."

"Dont Starve Together?!- TOTALLY! Such an adorably charming little game, and my Bro just put a new computer together maybe i should call him? "In an hour you can  play!? Sure ill just play something else while i wait....maybe."

"Heroes of the Storm!?- Haven't really go into this yet, I've heard great things, like its a lazy mans DOTA. Built by the actual company that inspired it. Cool, i have not the time nor the patience to DOTA. But wait maybe i should finish....."

"Wolfenstein- Its been a while hasn't it Wolfy? Now where was i here, almost at the end. Right. The hard part and the reason i let you sit on the shelf for too long. Kind of like..."

"Hotline Miami 2- Hrm. Well- i don't know if i'm up for a super unforgiving, intense game. But a friend suggested 'Pillars of Eternity.' Oh shit, 50 bucks! Man, well maybe...But thats another time sink. Oh my bro just got back to me. He can't play."

Aaaaaand now i'm lost and somehow very confused. 

So over about 2 hours i didn't play anything for a variety of different reasons. Something I've notice recently, and its not only to do with games, is the incredible, unfathomable amount of choices we have now for any given item. If your shopping for mustard and your indecisive i pity you. There's like 50 different kinds of mustard out there! Usually i notice my wife trying to make an entree choice at a restaurant. We no longer visit the cheesecake factory for this very reason. She'll spend most of our time there reading through the bible of food and choose nothing. Or choose something thats just 'ok' and spend her meal feeling disappointed that she's missing out on everything else. It's a sickness, you see.  A fear of missing out or 'FOMO' which is a real thing that tends to creep on me with online games. I guess I was so worried about missing out on one particular experience that i chose exactly nothing to play. Under acute circumstances this is was a profound wake up call. PICK A GAME AND SHUT THE FUCK UP TRISTAN.  

At any given time I have about 12 games i really want to play. I'll complete maybe 6 games a year. So mostly i'm biding  my time until the next great game with arbitrary titles i have very little interest in. Out of pure habit i suppose. Maybe my friends are playing something online so ill jump in just for the social aspect and get a few laughs out of it (which is vital). But time is a fickle bitch and the best revenge, seemingly, is to get vigilant and only choose the games we really are interested in.

I think when i'm truly at my happiest with a game is when I've waited for a great one player experience to come out and just sit on the couch (still the best place to play games) and really tuck into it and see it through till the end; when the disk doesn't leave the console until its finished. All that's  important is that i get an enjoyable experience as a return for hours invested regardless of what could have been or what i could be playing instead.

I no longer find myself hunting for what i want to play. The more games we play the more defined our tastes become. That could be said for anything we spend quality time with. I know i love being scared, the methods may be cheap sometimes but i feel like i get my monies worth if my systolic blood pressure maintains a steady 150. I love a great story and atmosphere above all else. I'll dabble in online competitive gaming but i find i soon become frustrated and consumed with self doubt quite quickly. And the time involved to become better is just a chore for me now.  I gravitate towards a certain type of game, so i  read and research release dates for titles and publishers i respect and make very rudimentary plans about what order what game should be played in. If i have a choice of 5 games to play right now ill go straight for what i know and like vs something completely new. Which now that i think about it creates a very boring image of myself. 

First world problems right!? So choose wisely my friends, time is an diminishing investment. Don't settle for the mundane, be productive and challenge yourself until that next game you want comes out. Then call in sick, ignore your wife and have a drink, heck, have 2. 

CONFESSIONS OF A TERRIBLE GAMER

Guest post by Rob Fernuk...definitely not Tristan Mowat!


I have to be completely honest - I am a terrible gamer. So why would this fledgeling gaming blog let me write an article for them? Because I suspect there are lot of you, like me, out there.

I grew up a child of the 80s. My first console was a Nintendo, but I also played Atari games at a friend’s house. A neighbour who must have been into computers let us play some of the earliest computer games in his bungalow. I remember him as an Asian man with an impressive beer belly who wore stained wife-beaters and always looked like he just woke up. He paid me to mow his lawn once a week, after which I experienced Pong and Space Invaders while they were still pretty new. Asteroids and Tetris might have been in the mix too, but my memories are fuzzy on the details now - which games were on which gear and when, I no longer know.

But Mario, he was my dude. I had a birthday party at a roller-skating rink and the theme was all Mario Bros. The air-brushed supermarket cake had a rubber model of Mario shooting a fireball from his hand. I probably still have that stashed away in a box of childhood trinkets somewhere. I knew that game inside and out. I remember finally successfully performing the trick where you jump on the turtle shell on the stairs up to a castle end-zone so many times that the game starts giving you extra lives for each jump. I jumped until the timer ran out, the life counter passed 99 and became just symbols. The week following I refused to turn off the Nintendo until all those lives were eventually used up, though my parents were bothered that the red light was always lit and complained that I would “ruin the machine”. Those were the days.

Did every kid know this trick?

When I was 13 or 14 my parents bought our first family PC and I got into Adventure games during the heyday of Full Motion Video. Myst, 7th Guest, Gabriel Knight, Tex Murphy, Phantasmagoria… As a young teen I was able to disappear into completely new worlds and walk around in them, even if it was just a CG rendered slide show. Sierra, Broderbund, Cyan, Trilobyte; all names that held magic to me for they were the builders of these worlds. I knew the names of Jane Jensen and Roberta Williams, female pioneers of digital storytelling.

I played these games. I completed these games. Usually there were no walkthroughs to be had until Prima Publishing started putting out books you could buy - and I did. Perhaps that was the beginning of becoming a terrible gamer.

Gabriel Knight - Sins of the Fathers

There were early signs that I was really not that talented at playing games. I couldn’t get through a few levels of Rebel Assault without exploding on the canyon walls over and over again. I did eventually see the level where you perform fly-bys on Star Destroyers while shooting at them, but I never could pass it. Rumour had it that in later levels you could fly across Hoth and shoot at ATAT Walkers, but I never saw that for myself.

Secret revealed!

Eventually I got into MMOs with a friend, and finally the other shoe dropped.

For me, it started with WoW, but eventually I got into Guild Wars 2, SWTOR, and The Secret World, and I dipped my toes into others like Wildstar, Elder Scrolls Online, FFXIV, and Tera. I loved them. They were everything I wanted to play in a game. New worlds. Flexible playing styles. Huge open maps. Seemingly unlimited potential… Until a random player from an opposing faction came along and gutted me like a fish. Well then. Clearly I was on the wrong server. Live and learn. But it was more than that - I struggled in these games mightily, and not in a way that excited me. I always felt behind the level curve, under-powered and over-matched. In some cases I could barely proceed without my friend practically carrying my useless carcass through to the end of a story instance. It was just a frustrating experience for everyone.

Part of my problem is that I hate to grind. As an adult (shudder) I now have a professional job. One that I am dedicated to. I pay rent and taxes. I work to live - as much as I am loathe to admit it. Who has time to GRIND??? Well apparently lots of people do, but not me. If I’m playing a game and progressing through its quest chains and geography, I have some expectation that my level will increase in sufficient time to reach the next area with appropriate power to kill the next tier of enemy. This is rarely the case. Game designers seem hell bent on keeping players behind the curve so they have to do extra killing or crafting or other menial tasks just to boost their level to reach the next area. If you don’t you’ll get your ass kicked. I got my ass kicked a lot.

Can we talk horror games? I love horror. It’s quite possibly my favourite genre in film and literature. For me, the best parts about the horror genre are atmosphere and world building. I love a decrepit, derelict building like none other. I love the sounds of horror, the look of horror, and as we get ever nearer my favourite season of Autumn, I love the smells of horror. Turns out what I don’t like are jump scares, and that seems to be what the horror genre in games has in spades. I simply can’t do it. For example I want to love Five Nights at Freddy’s. I love the idea of it, certainly. I love the look of it and the design of the creepy animatronic robots. I love the lore - which I’m happy to watch endless YouTube videos about (shout out to The Game Theorists’ excellent series which you can find on their channel, here: https://www.youtube.com/user/MatthewPatrick13). But I don’t think I’ve played more than two hours of the first game so far, because I just can’t deal with the jump-scares. Even when they are earned, they feel cheap. But worse is that they work on me. Yes, I jumped, you nearly gave me a heart attack by blasting loud sound and having something leap towards the screen.  Good job, you win, I’m out.
 

BOO...again.

As I grow older my fingers will never be coordinated or dexterous enough to win at a MOBA, or score enough kills in a competitive shooter. A million teabaggings will forever be performed over my digital corpse by children who have fucked my mother.  Sorry mom.

Do you know what? I’m okay with that. I’m okay with all of this. Gaming may be slowly getting too hard for me, or perhaps I never really had the chops to begin with.  Perhaps reading Prima strategy guides spoiled my patience to slowly work through a game, or life has taken my time and will to do so. But the one thing you cannot take away from me is my love of games. If you’ve gotten anything out of reading my recollections above, I hope you noticed that my fondness for games is still ever present. My trigger timing will slow. My aim will get worse. And I’ll still always hate to grind. But I’m still a gamer, dammit, and I have some more games I need to play.

By Rob Fernuk