Press 'X' to Rant: Diversity in Gaming

A.N: Who's got two thumbs and is really horrible at updating regularly now he's gotten out of the swing? *points to self* This guy. I now return you to your not-so-regularly scheduled programming.

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So, I guess we had to end up here eventually. Where does one even start when trying to cover this? The difficulty with a rant like this (for me, at least) is that I'm not entirely sure what is or isn't stepping over a line when talking about it. At time of writing, this rant's sat in my drafts for a full week with only four paragraphs, simply because any time I tried to write any more it felt like it was either breaking what little flow there was or like I was stepping over some sort of line. What I'm trying to get at here is that as I said in my Overwatch review, the most I can really hope to do in this area is simply point out what kind of things cross the line into insensitivity, and do my best to help people understand what pushed it over the line.

I suppose there would be worse places to start than current affairs in the field. So: as some of you may have heard, The Sims 4 recently (to a given definition of 'recently') released an update that, among other things, allowed even more extensive customisation of the gender of Sims, things like being able to decide whether a Sim can get pregnant/get other Sims pregnant, if they stand up at the loo, stuff like that. On top of that, a Sim's gender no longer limits what clothes or walk style can be used. This essentially means that you can now have transgender or non-binary sims, whereas previously you had to kind of make-do with significantly more restricting tools.

Press 'X' to Review: Overwatch

Overwatch
Platform: PC/Steam, PS4, Xbox One
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Premise: Fight! Fight! Fight! (Kiss! Kiss!)
Release Date: 24/05/2016

Alright, alright, I know what I said about double-updating on the weekend, but my sister was in the musical and I had to go with the rest of the family to watch, and then there was a friend's party, and one thing led to another. An admittedly weak excuse given that it's the last week of term and there's bugger-all else to do, but it's the one I'm going with. Anyway, here it is. The Big One(tm). Overwatch, the game that over the past year has managed to garner a social media profile comparable in size to that of Kim Kardashian. I'll say right off the bat that it was starting out with negative points, given that it's a multiplayer-only game selling at full price. I'm given to understand that in the US it's only $40, but here in Aus it was $70. I can appreciate that they're trying to be the best at just one thing as opposed to being mediocre at a bunch of things, but $70 is a bit steep. Its predecessor TF2 was never that pricey, even before it was free. And it has in-game purchases on top of that. 

Actually, the in-game purchases don't bother me that much, given that it's just buying cosmetic things like skins and sprays that don't provide any gameplay advantage (unless you count your opponent being struck dumb by how cool you look for long enough that you can maneuver behind them and shoot them in the head), but what does bother me is that there's no $5 tier of loot boxes. You see, Blizzard vouchers only come in $25 increments, and because the digital download costs $70, I had $5 left. But the smallest tier of paid loot box costs $2.99, so I now have $2 of Blizzard credit that I will never use. Wow, I managed to go from complaining about it costing too much to complaining about it costing too little in the same paragraph. But let's make like Jesse J and forget about the price tag for a minute, because realistically they can charge whatever they want for it as long as the game's fun. And it is, it's just that I wish that there was more of it.

Press 'X' to Review: Hacknet

Hacknet
Platform: PC/Steam
Developer: Team Fractal Alligator
Premise: After becoming the recipient of a Dead Man's Switch email from renowned hacker Bit, you set out to track down whatever caused his disappearance.
Release Date: 13/08/2015

A.N. Hello everyone! I'm finally back after who-knows-how-long on hiatus from exams. Jeez, I've missed this. To make up for the last few weeks, I'll be double updating this weekend, and over the holidays I intend to get ahead of the game (no pun intended) a bit and write a few reviews preemptively in case I have to go on hiatus again, so that we don't have a big-ass wait like this last one (again, sorry about that). So, without further ado, I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

***

So, as mentioned above, I've had exams recently, which has somewhat hampered my ability to play things to review. However, I did manage to play a few quick things in the occasional break from study. As you may have guessed from the title, one of these games was Hacknet, a hacking sim (and here I'd like to quote directly from the official website) "so real you shouldn't play it in an airport." 

I first encountered Hacknet at PAX Aus last year, where I managed to fail rather dismally at the tutorial. Hacknet isn't a game that's here to hold your hand, make no mistake. I'll confess to having made several trips to one of the Steam walkthroughs, on some occasions because I was massively thick and had no clue how to do something, on others because I'd simply written down a password wrong, and on others because I'd accidentally bugged out the game and physically couldn't proceed with the story. One of Hacknet's main selling points is that it doesn't have specific mission boundaries, just contracts that give you an objective in a persistent world. However, one of the difficulties you tend to encounter with Indie games that try to have a persistent non-linear world with a semi-linear story is that it all looks and feels very immersive until it starts bugging out because after a while it just becomes variable hell and the designer throws their hands in the air and goes "screw it, that'll do."