Gaming With GADD

Week ending 11/27/14

Last week I played way too much, right guys? Don’t worry, I’ll try to reel it in this week guys.

Friday

WWE 2K15
So it came out today that the “bug” that was causing people to get simulated to the end of MyCareer after they win the WWE Championship isn’t a bug at all, but that’s ACTUALLY how it’s supposed to go. What a fucking load of shit. You promote an “up to 15 year” career mode where you work your way into the hall of fame, but instead you automatically retire after winning the WWE championship. I’d be fine with a shorter career mode, but only if it was actually full of content! Instead this bullshit mode has month after month of “we don’t have anything for you” because you can only wrestle on 3 PPVs a year, no matter how high you are on the roster! Who am I, Brock Lesnar? Seriously, imagine if the actual WWE was run that way. “Oh man, we accidentally used up everyone’s three appearances early this year, hope you enjoy WWE Survivor Series, main evented by R-Truth vs Titus O’Neil in a 90 minute Iron Man match! What makes it worse is that the months were you do get “content” it’s still complete horse shit. You get the exact same sequence of scenes as everyone else, no randomization at all as far as I can tell, with VERY little choice in the stories where you still just go out and fight lifeless pointless matches, and you get a brief 10 second cutscene before or after a match and occasionally get sent messages by other wrestlers on twitter in place of promos. This type of career mode works in NBA because it’s all about the games and the minor story stuff is secondary. But in a wrestling game, the stories are JUST as important, if not more so, than the wrestling action. You can’t half ass this shit. This is supposedly the mode that the past gen just couldn’t handle? What a fucking joke. At this point I’ve decided that I’m not even going to look at another WWE game until Yuke’s is removed from development entirely. At it’s core, every other shortcoming of this game could be overlooked if the core wrestling gameplay was actually fun and enjoyable, but it’s just the same stale garbage that’s been put out for the last few years, and holy shit is the new addition of opening match chain wrestling AWFUL. Maybe if it happened every now and then, but every fucking match? Who the hell wants a lock picking mini-game for the first 3 or 4 grapples of every match? Just fucking fire everyone and start again.  They’re NEVER going to make a fun wrestling game again, it’s been..what, 7 years since the last good one?  They’ve lost whatever sense they once had as to what made a fun and enjoyable video game.  This is just a pathetic cash grab full of horrible design choices and cut corners.

Saturday

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright
Played through the next Professor Layton chapter, which was considerably longer than the first one. Had Layton and Nick meet up for the first time in a rather…unexpected way. At least my concerns about it being two completely different games that barely intertwine seem to be laid to rest, based on this chapter. So far I’m really enjoying this game, even if it is just more of the same. It doesn’t appear to be anything special, but it’s definitely not a step down either, and that’s good enough for me in this case.

Sunday

Football and then Survivor Series, so I didn’t get to play anything

Monday

Just wasn’t really feeling anything today. Is it weird that I get a twinge of guilt on days that I don’t play any games?

Tuesday

WWE Supercard
AW HELL, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?! New update for the app went live, introducing a new tier of Survivor cards. Unfortunately I didn’t get put into Survivor tier, as I’m still in Legendary++. Played a few matches but just wasn’t really feeling like sinking a few hours into it today.

Destiny
Seriously?! Destiny? What am I doing?! I felt like playing something but didn’t have any strong urges towards anything in particular, so I went with some mindless shooting in a few rounds of Crucible. Didn’t get any good drops, and didn’t have much desire to continue either.

Wednesday

Split Second
I ALMOST let this game fade away, but I remembered that I really liked this and said I wanted to at least put forward a good attempt towards completing it, so I eventually settled on playing SS. But instantly my completionist mentality took over and I went back to try and turn my previous non first place finishes into first places. I did eventually do some of episode 5 as well, and man are some of these events rough. I know, I know, video game getting harder as it progresses, what a novel concept! Surely such a thing has never happened before!

Thursday

Happy Thanksgiving to all the US readers out there, but I didn’t really partake in many Thanksgiving activities today, due to family schedules making it get postponed til tomorrow. While the day was mostly ruled by football, I still managed to play

Split Second
I only played a little bit, just til the end of episode 5, before I became strangely exhausted, considering I didn’t do any family Thanksgiving stuff, and had to just call it a night. I am up to the “mid-season spectacular” episode though, and I have to say that I really like how this game just goes for it when it comes to presenting itself as a TV show. It looks as though the next episode introduces a new Air Revenge mode, where you get to fight back against the chopper that’s been dropping missiles on you. That sounds like it could be fun, but it’s really starting to get to the point where I dread the parts of the game where I’m not just racing. The races are just so much more fun than any of the events. I need to be able to mess with other guys, and I can’t do that when I’m the only one on the track!

I know it sounds a little bit disingenuous when I talk every week about how I’m disappointed that I didn’t play more and didn’t provide enough content for the article, but it’s still true! I just feel like I’m getting into another gaming rut where nothing is grabbing a hold of me and forcing me to play through it. I do have one thing that I know will grab hold of me as soon as I start playing it though, and I’ll likely go back into it next week.

QUESTION OF THE WEEK:

Since it is Thanksgiving week and all, what are you thankful for in gaming this year? I’m personally thankful that I haven’t purchased any of the completely fucking busted major releases that have come out lately. I’m thankful for PS+, it may not give out huge AAA titles on PS4 like some people think it should, but it gives me an opportunity to play games I would never have touched otherwise. Finally I’m thankful for you, the GADD readers…all 5 of you.

 

Written by Matthew Przybysz

Matt has suddenly become a bit of a Sony fanboy without even realizing it. Also he occasionally streams via his PS4 on twitch at http://www.twitch.tv/gadd_live

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