2012, the Year of Fear!

What's that? Year of Fear? Whatever could this twat mean? Well from my perspective it's a variety of things. I'd like to go into details about them regardless if you care since this is my blog and I do whatever I want... until Team America world police shuts down the internet in the name of the entertainment industry just because they can't handle their own shit and get with the fucking times! Well if you haven't already guessed it my first "Year of Fear" topic is the US bills SOPA and PIPA


Assuming anyone who may stumble upon me online is net savvy, SOPA and PIPA are bills the entertainment industry of the USA has had drafted to screw with the internet so they can turn it into nothing but online shopping websites, credit card/banks websites and your email. Why? Well since you asked because EVERYONE has participated in piracy at least once in their internet lives and they want more money! The thing is most people "pirate" for a variety of legit reasons,
1) Not available where they live eg. Australia didn't get 'The Flight of Dragons' released here on DVD.(Lucky me bought the US ONLY released DVD from eBay)
2)They don't want to buy an album for 1 song. iTunes has now made that easier to not need to pirate it but in a SHITTY QUALITY MP3! I want 325kb/second bit rate thank you!
3)Everyone can afford the internet but not everyone can't afford to buy all their favourite TV show, movies and video games.
4)The product is discontinued(personally I've had this problem A LOT!)

Now I don't promote piracy but I can understand why some people pirate and why most people unknowing pirate because they DON'T UNDERSTAND THE LAWS! Now if you want full information on SOPA and PIPA you can go read about them on Wikipedia. These bills have been shelved for now and will most likely go into a rewrite with even more legalese to confuse the masses but if we stay vigilant and actually learn to understand legalese, we won't lose the internet to greedy pricks who can't stand losing a nickel from 1 song being downloaded.


Next topic on my "Year of Fear" is about video games... mainly that more rubbish is coming out and selling well! In an age where the besting selling game is a realistic military murder simulator that has you shooting up non Americans(for those who don't understand, I'm talking about Call Of Duty) it's obvious a GEN-NES gamer like me is crying "The End Is Nigh!" and is also ready to throw money at Nintendo for the Wii U. You see I've been gaming since 1990 and I was brought up on gaming from the 8-bit era and have played every console to date and I know when shit is hitting the fan in the gaming world.

This year is that. Sequelitus(thank you Egoraptor for the word) plagued last years release schedule and this year looks worse. Now don't get me wrong, I love a good sequel(case in point anything Mario, Uncharted trilogy, Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, etc.) but this year looks like it'll be a huge load of hit and miss with newish IPs second outings(Borderlands 2, Bioshock Infinite[Bioshock 2 doesn't count!], Darksiders II) and big franchises getting ready to stagnate in the water(any FPS sequel of this year... mainly staring at COD but also Halo 4). My point I'm trying to get to is that the majority of these mega franchises and soon to be mega franchises are the AIDS virus of the gaming industry and we need more new IPs and they need to be cheaper on release so a great new game like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West doesn't fail. See I actually am considering Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning but I think a limited editions for a new IP is STUPID and I don't want to pay full price for an unknown title that may suck and you get fuck all for trading it in(If you bought Too Human on release you understand where I'm going here). See I don't mined paying full price for a Zelda or Mario game because I know the suck to great ratios of those games(Call Of Duty fans do the same thing pretty much) but When it came to Enslaved: Odyssey to the West I waited for a price fall to AU$30(US$15) because it was a new IP, I didn't have the money at the time and I wasn't sure about it and I don't trust professional reviewers since they are mostly corrupt. Yes it's a great game but charging AU$110 for a game that has only a good developer behind it is stupid! A new IP is a risk and it should be treated as one. Developers and publishers need to understand that we are fans of the games, not the company! We don't care who made it for the most part, we care if the game is good.

Then there's the stupidity of both Nintendo and Sony releasing new consoles in the same year. This is idiocy it the highest degree. See by releasing both Wii U and the PS Vita in the same year, they are pocket gouging people and not everyone has the money for both. If you want to sell a new console you don't release it until you have a good line up of titles(this is where the 3DS failed at launch) and don't launch in the same year as a competitor(This is why the PS3 failed at launch) plus, and this is important... don't over price your console(Again this is where the PS3 failed at launch... and a few years after launch)! See I'm not buying a PlayStation Vita because there's nothing I want on it at the moment but next year they may have BUT I am buying a Wii U on launch since it will replace my Wii and most importantly will have some huge titles released during the first couple of months. Sony, if you read this I will buy a PS Vita under the following conditions,
1) You release an external UMD drive for the Vita or A UMD version of the Vita so I can play my PSP games since you don't support them in your PSP voucher thing.
2)Drop the price of it to the same as the 3DS.
3)Release a minimum of 4 JRPGs on it in Australia and/or the US
4)Release a HDMI and/or component cable for it to play on my TV
5)Get Mistwalker to make a JRPG for it since Hironobu Sakaguchi knows how to make a great JRPG. Hell even get them to release Lost Odyssey on it!

Then there's the SOPA and PIPA thing again... but the fact the ESA supports it. These guys represents the AAA games industry in government and also sponsor E3. I am not doing a E3 recap on my blog since these douche bags want these bills to pass and if they did my blog and 90% of the internet would be shutdown. I love gaming and because I love it I don't want to see independent developers screwed anymore then they have(I'm referring to megauploads being shut down and Megauploads is a CLOUD STORAGE website!) who need online sites to store and distribute their games without publishers screwing them over(I'm looking at you Atari and how you screwed Krome Studios over by not releasing Blade Kitten episode 2 and not paying them and the creator his royalties!).


To add to my "Year of Fear" just for the sake of it, the supposed Apocalypse! See people for generations have predicted and failed on what the apocalypse will be, whether it'll be biblical or metaphorical who gives a shit. See I personally have a series of predictions that I find both logical and unlikely I'd like to throw out,
Scenario 1 - SOPA and PIPA pass, the internet is dead, anarchy across the world leading to heavy police action, war breaks out.
Scenario 2 - Solar flares become strong enough to knock out wireless communication, mass panic, riots start because it will take a long time to fix, anarchy... you get the picture.
Scenario 3 - Economic collapse, the Global Financial Crisis has the big players (eg. USA and Europe) in extreme debt and start a war with their debtors, a new country becomes the new leading financial nation and they become a target of war, famine will ensue because no one can afford food or get paid to produce food.
Scenario 4 - World War 3 is started by a big nation who's paranoid of a little nation and it turns out the little nation makes up for it with big guns, unusual allies are formed and nuclear war breaks out, only a few country remain that aren't irradiated, nuclear winter ensues and a new ice age begins.

Sure the odds of these happening aren't very high but you never know and if the biblical apocalypse happens... HA HA HA HA! Yeah right! Don't get me wrong, anything is possible but anyone who thinks they'll be saved in a biblical apocalypse is an idiot! No one is sin free and sins aren't forgiven.


Well that's it for this blog post. 2012 is a new year of possibilities and by the look of it I'll have a little less games to review, but then again it may be a lot more. Who knows, maybe I'll be lucky enough to be hired as a corrupt video game reviewer for a big website like Gamespot. I hope the year turn out great and I have a niece who will be born any day now and who knows, maybe she'll bring the apocalypse... HA HA HA HA!